The Big Cull
Market Morsel
Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) have released their September 2024 update to sheep industry projections, showing some significant revisions to some elements since the February 2024 update. The size the national sheep flock has been revised up by 3.4% in 2024 to 79.1 million head. However the trend over the next few years is for flock decline.
In 2025, MLA continue to expect the flock to decrease from 2024 to 76.9 million head, but this figure was also revised up from the February 2024 outlook by 3.9%. In 2026 MLA have only a marginal revision to the flock, just 0.7% lower than the earlier update suggested, from 74.5 million head to 74.0 million head.
Underpinning the decline in the national flock are higher revisions to slaughter estimates for both lamb and sheep, but the sheep sector is showing a much bigger lift in anticipated turnoff in the coming years.
In 2024, MLA expect lamb slaughter to be 6.2% higher than their February estimates with 27.7 million head bow forecast for annual slaughter. A similar revision upwards is now expected for 2025 with 26.3 million head of lamb to be turned-off, an increase of 5.8% from the February projections. In 2026 MLA have lifted the lamb slaughter to 25.5 million head, an increase of 4.2%.
There has been marginal change to the 2024 sheep slaughter estimate, down 1.1% from the February outlook to 10.0 million head. However, MLA expect a big lift in the sheep cull in 2025 with the new forecast coming in 21.3% higher than the February projections at 11.3 million head. An even larger increase has been calculated for 2026 with sheep slaughter 38.5% higher than the earlier forecasts at 11.1 million head, up from just 8 million from the February outlook.
