Over 1.9 million cattle were traded through Irish marts in 2025, according to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's (DAFM's) Animal Identification and Movement (AIM) Bovine Statistics Report for 2025.

Of the 1,912,622 head of cattle (including the 50,144 unsold movements) through Irish marts last year, just under 982,500 were male cattle and just over 930,000 were females.

Looking at mart movements by breed, Angus was the most common cattle breed traded through marts last year with over 484,000 Angus animals going under the hammer across the country.

Limousin, Friesian, Charolais and Hereford were the next most common breeds traded through marts, at approximately 334,000; 327,000; 284,000 and 252,000 head respectively.

Looking at the age profile of cattle traded through marts, over 288,000 of these were calves under six weeks-of-age.

Farm-to-farm movements

The mart remains the most popular place to trade cattle overall but almost 1.3 million cattle were traded farm-to-farm in 2025.

According to the DAFM report, 1,277,468 cattle were traded privately in 2025.

While the overall mart trading figure is higher, looking specifically at calf sales, farm-to-farm movements are proving more popular for calf trading.

Almost 417,000 calves under six weeks-of-age were traded farm-to-farm in 2025, substantially above the 288,000 calves traded through marts.

The graph below details all cattle movements by month and type:

As the graph above indicates, March and April are the main months for cattle movements in both marts and private sales.

Cattle trading nationally tends to ease off for the summer months before spiking again in marts in the autumn and less so for private sales.