Australian farmers are staring down the barrel of no feed, high diesel costs and now a forecast super El Niño, which is pushed graziers across New South Wales are offloading cattle in droves.
More than half a million head have already been sold through saleyards this year, up from around 377,000 at the same point last year, as producers rush to sell while stock are still in good condition and prices remain firm.
At Scone, in the Upper Hunter, north of Sydney, agents have just held their largest cattle sale in 20 years, with Tuesday’s yarding second only to a fixture almost to the day two decades ago when 3647 head were sold. In just 11 weeks, more than half of last financial year’s total throughput has already passed through the rings a stark snapshot of how quickly the region has flipped from ‘an unbelievable first half of 2025’ to bone dry conditions.
Stock agent Stuart Sheldrake told ABC news in Australia that the season was ‘short and sharp’: the tap turned off at the end of August 2025, and despite Scone breaking its 24 hour rainfall record earlier this year, the deluge came in a two hour burst that ran off rather than soaking in. Intense rain followed by hot, dry weather has stripped what little soil moisture there was, prompting comparisons with the 2016-2019 drought, dubbed the worst in living memory in much of inland New South Wales.
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This time round, many farmers have been quicker to pull the drought management lever, enacting sell down plans to protect core breeding herds rather than hanging on and hoping for rain. Agents say cattle are largely in good order despite the season, underlining that decisions are being driven more by feed, fuel and forward risk than by animal welfare crises – a situation that will resonate with Scottish producers who have had to shed numbers early in recent dry spells or during the feed and fertiliser price spikes of 2022–25.
Sheldrake points to the conflict in the Middle East as a key factor in the calculus, pushing up diesel prices and freight costs at the very moment that supplementary feed is scarce and dear. Faced with expensive fuel, long haul distances to agistment country and a lack of affordable rations, many producers see selling cattle now – and ‘putting a bit in the back pocket’ – as the least worst option.
The saving grace, for now, is a much stronger cattle market than in previous droughts, with Sheldrake noting that they have ‘never experienced a dry time like this and experienced a market as well as it is’.
Western NSW grazier Amanda Thorpe brings the human side of the story into sharp focus. She has already sold some young stock and sent hundreds of cattle away on agistment in Wanaaring and Longreach to keep pressure off the home block, describing herself as ‘emotionally spent – still burnt from the last drought’ after feeding since October.
Thorpe likens buying stock after the last drought to ‘the Hunger Games’, recalling how prices and competition for breeding females surged once the season turned. Having invested heavily in heifers for the long game, she is determined not to lose the cows that ‘have served us well’, preferring to move them rather than cull, even as the heat, dry winds and evaporation drive some Central West producers back into drought conditions ‘fast and hard’.
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