Meat and Livestock Australia has launched two new market indicators for sheep and cattle in response to the growing popularity of online livestock sales.

The Online Young Cattle Indicator (OYCI) and the Online Lamb Indicator (OLI) will monitor online sales of cattle and lambs.

MLA market information manager Stephen Bignell said they were the first publicly available online indicators.

“The online indicators provide producers with a greater breadth of data than they’ve previously had,” he said.

“It increases the sales channels that MLA reports on.”

MLA’s National Livestock Reporting System reports on more than 50 physical saleyard markets, producing 16 price indicators reported on a daily, weekly and fortnightly basis.

The indicators drive about 70 per cent of MLA website traffic and cover about one quarter of all livestock transactions nationwide.

The OYCI and OLI will follow the same structure and model of other indicators published on the MLA website, capturing cattle and lamb sales on online platforms that match predefined specifications.

Mr Bignell said online sales had been steadily growing in popularity as an alternative for producers to market their livestock.

“Online marketplaces boomed during the national rebuild between 2020 – 2022,” he said.

“Even as the herd and flock rebuild matures, we’ve seen online marketplaces remain popular.”