The Northern Ireland Livestock Auctioneers’ Association has confirmed that all sales will cease for a minimum of two weeks with immediate effect.

While two marts in NI (Armoy and Saintfield) had already shut last week, others had continued to operate sales and saw large increases in cattle numbers offered for sale as farmers reacted to concerns that mart trading would soon cease.

With an improvement in the weather and strong demand for grazing cattle, the closure has come at a bad time, but has been deemed unavoidable in the circumstances.

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