NSW sold the most cattle and sheep via saleyards in the nation according to the recently released Saleyard Survey conducted annually by Meat and Livestock Australia.
There were 1.75 million cattle sold via saleyards in NSW during the 2017-18 financial year. This was just over 500,000 more cattle than Queensland which came in second.
It should be noted the NSW data was from 39 cattle selling centres, while Qld had 23 saleyards.
On the sheep and lamb side, there were 9.04 million sheep sold in NSW via 25 saleyards, quite a way in front of Victoria with 4.58 million sheep across 16 yards.
Breaking down the numbers further in NSW, Dubbo once again led the way for cattle throughput with 241,282 head. This figure was up from the 2017-18 result of 199,431 head.
Wagga Wagga won second place with 178,357 head - up nearly six per cent on the year before.
In third spot was Carcoar recording 172,925 cattle.
Rounding out the top five were Tamworth (137,745 head) and Gunnedah (133,367 head).
Interestingly, the top five selling centres were responsible for the transaction of nearly 50 per cent of the cattle sold via saleyards in NSW.
Wagga Wagga took the top spot for sheep and lamb sales in NSW during the past financial year. It recorded 1.82 million head which was higher than the previous year’s total and also accounted for about 20pc of the sheep sold in NSW.
The Central West saleyards of Forbes and Dubbo took the next spots on the leader board.
Forbes had 1.59 million head which was more than 200,000 higher than 2016-17. Dubbo was not far behind with 1.48 million, although its figures were similar to the year before.
Yass saleyards had a bounce in yardings and totalled 802,779 head, while Corowa was next with 625,000.
For those interested in the key numbers from other states, Qld’s top cattle yard went to Roma with a total of 305,692 head and second was Dalby with 219,243 cattle.
The border town of Wodonga was first for Victoria in the cattle stakes (200,000 cattle), and Ballarat claimed the sheep top spot in Vic with 1.38 million head.
In South Australia it was Naracoorte in the lead with 70,060 cattle and Dublin with 524,357 sheep.
Muchea was the top cattle selling centre in Western Australia (93,310 head), while Katanning took out the sheep with 829,880 head.