Cattle, lamb and goat slaughter figures were all held mostly steady in the past seven days in eastern states processing sheds.
Cattle slaughter overall was unchanged in the largest beef processing state of Queensland at 77,790 units however, while steer numbers rose two percent, female slaughter eased three percent.
In both NSW and Victoria where rain fell last week cattle kills were back three percent while SA and Tasmanian numbers were little changed.
On the lamb processing front, Victoria, the largest lamb producing state, saw output rise four percent to 193,038 units while NSW numbers eased seven percent to 101,937 head.
The change in NSW was due to annual maintenance works at one major plant which also saw the number of sheep processed in the state fall by half to 27,197 units. This consistently strong demand for lamb kept the heat on prices with record sales written at markets in Dubbo, Corowa, Bendigo and again in Ballarat.
