Methodology

Sources

Each mart in the directory has a report source: usually a page on its website where it posts a PDF or a web page after every sale. We fetch new reports once a day, politely and with a cache so nothing is fetched twice, and parse the figures out of them. Reports that cannot be parsed reliably are skipped and the mart shows as "directory only" until we can read it. Nothing is typed in by hand.

The source document is linked from every sale page. Agriland and other trade press reports are used only to sanity check our parsing; their figures are never shown here.

Stated and derived averages

When a mart states an average in its report, that is the figure shown, exactly as given. Marts know their own trade and we do not second guess them.

When a mart gives no average for a line, one of two things happens and both are marked with an asterisk (*) and the word "derived":

• If the mart stated averages for several weight bands but no overall figure, the "all weights" figure is the plain mean of those bands, weighted by head where the mart gave a count.
• If the mart stated no averages at all but listed individual lots, the average is worked out from those lots, weighted by the number of animals in each. Bear in mind that the lots a mart prints are usually its better ones, so a lot-derived average runs high.

A line where the mart gave a range but no average keeps the range and shows no average. Nothing is invented from a range.

Weight bands

Marts band cattle by liveweight in their own way. We map each mart's bands onto a fixed set so they can be compared: under 300 kg, 300 to 400 kg, 400 to 500 kg, 500 to 600 kg, 600 kg and over. The mart's own label is kept and shown on the sale page, so a band that reads "forward stores" at one mart and "500 to 600 kg" at another can be told apart. Where the fit is rough it is the mart's label that is right.

Units

Cattle are quoted per kg liveweight, which is how the ring reports them, with the per head average alongside where the mart gave it. Sheep are quoted per head, because that is how sheep are sold and reported; a per kg figure is shown only where the mart printed one. Calves and dairy cows are per head for the same reason.

Cross-mart figures and "this week"

The home page tiles and the category pages compare marts within one ISO week, Monday to Sunday. "This week" always means the most recent week in which any mart reported, never the calendar week you are reading this in. The headline figure for a category is the median of the marts' all-weights averages in that week; the median is used so that one unusual sale does not drag the figure. The change shown is against the same median for the week before, and only where both weeks have a figure.

Twelve month charts run back from the latest report on file, not from today, so a chart never looks emptier just because the site has not been rebuilt for a while.

What none of this is

A mart's average is a description of one sale, not a forecast and not a valuation. Animals are priced individually on the day. Nothing on this site is a guarantee of what any animal will make, and nothing on it should be relied on in place of the mart's own report or your own judgement at the ring.

Corrections

If a figure here does not match the mart's report, the parser has made a mistake. Tell us which sale and we will fix the parser and rebuild.