This week’s cattle trade saw another steady week across the board, with mart managers reporting solid demand across all categories of stock.

This week has seen the last flush of numbers coming out, with wet weather in parts of the west over the end of last week meaning many cattle have now been housed.

All mart mangers I spoke to this week said that there has been an increased presence of factory agents around the ring over the last two weeks.

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Finished cattle numbers continue to be very tight, with a number of processors now depending on agents picking up cattle in marts to fill their weekly kill requirements.

Agents appear to be particularly active for heavy cows or heavy bulls, with most just looking for something which will deliver volume of beef, with spec taking a back seat.

Dry cows

Good-quality dry cows continue to knock on the door of €4/kg this week, with plainer-quality cows lacking flesh back in the €3/kg to €3.50/kg range.

Agents are continuing to pay the equivalent of €8/kg and over it for any heavy cattle with flesh this week.

Mart managers are also reporting a flush of activity for heifers with stars this week.

Participants in SCEP have until Friday to have 65% of the females over 16 months in their herd genotyped four- or five-star on the replacement index.

Weanling exporters are also back as active as ever, with one exporter actively buying for the north African market again in the last week.

Boats

It’s understood there have also been a number of enquiries about assembling boatloads of cattle for middle eastern markets before the end of the year.

Despite the presence of exporters around rings, the number of weanlings exported up to the end of September is back 5% on the same period in 2024.

Total live exports for 2025 are up 4%, mainly due to the fact that calf exports are up 13% during that period.

Trade with Northern Ireland has picked up in September, with numbers tightening north of the border, but exports of adult cattle are back 15%, while store cattle exports are back 17% on the same period in 2024.

Taking a look at this week’s Martbids analysis table, we see that it was the heifers who were the highlight of the trade.

This was a combination of heavy heifers driving the trade and a good demand for breeding heifers in sales.

Top-quality heifers in the 600kg-plus weight category were up a massive 40c/kg this week, with average-quality heifers in the same weight bracket also coming in at €4.74/kg, up 33c/kg.

The bullock trade was a little easier this week, with most weight and quality categories seeing downward movement.

The bull weanling trade could be described as solid, with very little movement compared with last week.

Lighter bulls are still in big demand, with €7/kg very achievable for the top 25% of weanlings in mart sales.

Top-quality bulls in the 300kg to 400kg weight bracket came in just shy of €6.50/kg, again relatively unchanged from the previous week.

Heavy heifer weanlings also got a lift, with top-quality heifers in the 400kg to 450kg weight bracket coming in at €6.02/kg this week, up 31c/kg.