Sheep notes

Slaughter

Between January and October 2016 Western Australian lamb slaughter reached 2.47 million head, a 16% increase when compared to the same period in 2015 (Table 2), which was also a strong year for lamb slaughter. If the trend continues for the remainder of 2016, a total of 2.95 million lambs may be processed by the end of 2016- the highest throughput on record.

Sheep slaughter decreased 2% year on year from 1.02 million to 1.00 million and is on trend to reach 1.28 million for 2016.

The trend seen in Australia as a whole was quite different to that seen in WA as seen below in Table 3, as there had been a decline in both the number of sheep and lambs slaughtered during the first ten months of 2016 compared to 2015. Sheep slaughter was down 16% and lamb slaughter was down 2%. If these trends continue for the remainder of 2016 there would be a total of 7.16 million sheep slaughtered and 22.48 lambs slaughtered.

Wool production

As demonstrated in Table 4 wool receivals for the first nine months of 2016 have increased 9% in WA when compared to the same period during 2015. Wool receivals have increased from 54.7 million kg to 59.7 million kg in that time and are forecast to reach 85.3 million kg by the end of 2016. This increase may be due to the high prices experienced during 2016, encouraging producers to sell wool stored on farm.

Between January and September 2016 there has been a 1% decrease in the volume of wool received nationally from 254.1 million kg to 251.2 million kg.