Mart sales wind down for holidays

Marts: Most marts will have held their final sales for 2005 by this evening, following a busy autumn which has seen an increase in the throughput of cattle through the live sale.

There will be no mart sales next week, and the general run of sales will not resume until the second week in January, while sales at some of the smaller marts are not scheduled to resume until the end of next month.

Some factories supplying the British supermarket trade are killing on Friday and expect to slaughter heifers - mainly - one or two days during the second half of next week to supply orders for fresh meat outlets.