Australian Cattle & Beef Market Report

By: Ripley Atkinson, Ripley Atkinson

Fri, 03 Oct 2025, 01:51

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A blockbuster Q3 with record September yarding's and kill numbers at 50 year highs

Key Points

The month of September 2025, Roma’s monthly yarding volume was the highest month on record.
Q3 2025 Cattle slaughter was the highest since the 1970’s – surpassing Q3 2014 on conservative estimates, and pushing well beyond 2.5 million head on the optimistic side.
Markets finding their happy medium, prices cooling across the board.

Supply

Sept-25 yardings for Roma were 109% or 24,215 head higher than the 10-year September average. This year’s yarding for the market was the highest on record for the store sale (not including when 2 sales were run at the centre)
- For most of this year I’ve been mentioning QLD throughput had been running behind, the seasonal strength has been a driver of that, but as cattle reach saleable weights and high prices are on offer, volumes have significantly ramped up.
Slaughter gently softening, VIC numbers continue to pull back(last week’s decline looks like a breakdown)
- With Dinmore bringing on a Friday shift, this added capacity and throughput should lift the QLD kill and offset the decline we’ve seen in VIC, at least to an extent.
With Q3 over, cattle slaughter & beef production estimates can be made – the results speak for themselves.
- On conservative estimates (NLRS vs ABS differential at 22%) – Q3 2025 slaughter will be the highest quarter since the 1970’s. On an optimistic forecast (ABS vs NLRS diff. at 26%) slaughter will exceed 2.5 million head.
- Beef production to push beyond 760,000 metric tonnes – beating the previous record set in Q2 (assuming cwt’s are unchanged at 306kg/head)
The growth in the cattle herd over the past 5 years is well and truly coming home to roost in the numbers we’re pushing through the system – remember the herd is over 42.5 million head in November this year.

Demand

The heat has come out of the restocker market this week in the north as the realization of summer and hot temperatures develop.
Favourable rains of 20-30mm over the week in the south and more on the way could spur some southern demand for light cattle.
Feedlot demand beginning to ease on all cattle classes with plenty of numbers around the buyers at present and are well booked forwards and are looking to go a little longer in front than they have for a while.
The expansion of yards in Australia is going to become a major floor in maintain feedlot rates above what we previously thought were strong prices – this will be exacerbated looking forwards by the growth in capacity in southern yards.
The big question is how long do the southern processors continue to wear losses? The answer to that I don’t know, but we’ll be able to understand it in the way northern slaughter markets behave as to where that trigger point is.

Price

Markets back again this week, both direct and through the yards – not material but like a lot of times, the market is now easing to find itself a comfortable level, same as when it bounces off the bottom.
Where’s the next move for cows? To end 2025, we should see solid numbers of cull cows again be marketed post spring calving – profitability remains an issue on cows for the processor so have they had their run this year?
A question I’d throw out there, would be what happens to markets and prices in 2026 if VIC & regions affected by drought, remain in drought? Its an interesting one to ponder.

Weather

An underwhelming September for SE SA, VIC & parts of southern NSW – the below average rainfall results in the month have hurt the regions chances of a recovery in Spring from drought.

image-20251003114849-1

Significant heat stretching across northern Australia on the forecast this week, stretching well into northern NSW.

Meats & Livestock

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