Fairyard · the number, against the weekly average
Fair question — so here it is, tested on five years of MLA's published saleyard reports, starting with the deepest cohort we track: Wagga trade lambs, 26.1–30 kg carcass. The blue line is each week's reported average price, exactly as published, held until the next report — that's the number you'd actually be following — and it breaks wherever the market went quiet for a month. Behind each dot, the blue bar is that same week's recorded spread — the cheapest sale to the dearest — so every average sits inside the selling it came from. The bronze line is the Fairyard number, built from nothing but those same published figures — each week using only what was known that Monday. Watch what the blue does, and what the bronze does through it. Then pick any saleyard and spec below — the same test, every sheep cohort we track, misses included.
Nothing below is an opinion — every figure is computed from the 262 weeks of Wagga trade lamb, 26.1–30 kg carcass, the deepest yard and spec we track, and the weeks that go against us are left in. The tiles above recompute for whatever cohort you pick.
At fat score 3, MLA had no average to publish in 91 of 262 weeks — once for seven weeks straight. And this is the deepest yard and spec we track: one fat score, one weight band or one yard sideways, the reporting is thinner still. The Fairyard number printed all 262 weeks, both fat scores.
A different run of lambs sells each week. At fat 3 the reported average typically moved $15 a head week to week — and on average 43% of a jump reversed at the very next report. The market didn't do that; the lambs in the yard changed. The Fairyard number moved about $2, because it blends the recent weeks' selling instead of repricing your mob on one draft.
Every tested week we asked: which sat closer to the average the spec actually made — the last published average, or the Fairyard number standing at the start of that week, computed before the sale? At fat 3: Fairyard, $14.65 off against the average's $16.05, closer in 91 of 170 weeks. At fat 4, deep selling with a fresh average almost every week, the average won: $8.40 against Fairyard's $10.05. That's the trade, plainly: where the report runs deep and weekly, last week's average is a genuinely good guide. Everywhere thinner — most specs, most yards, and a third of fat-3 weeks right here — there's nothing to follow, and the Fairyard number was the closer, steadier guide.
Fairyard takes no commission and no cut of any sale — the only thing this number has to sell is being right. Every week behind these figures is in the table below, misses included.
What the data is, exactly. MLA's National Livestock Reporting Service has an independent reporter at each of these saleyards on sale days. For each spec they publish head counted, the average price, and the cheapest and dearest sales recorded — this page adds nothing to that. The blue line and bars are those published figures; the Fairyard number is a blend of them, each week computed from sales up to that Monday only — it never saw the average that came after it. Where a spec's own selling ran thin, the Fairyard number was built from other saleyards' selling of the same spec — those weeks are marked in the table below, and the tooltip says so; they are never passed off as local selling. Where a spec barely trades at all, the app says "not enough selling to value this yet" rather than showing a number it can't stand behind.
Reproduced courtesy of Meat & Livestock Australia Limited – www.mla.com.au
| Week | Fairyard said | From | Sales ranged | Reported average | Head | Gap |
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