Sales set for price revival

Queensland Country Life market analyst Ken Wilcock forecasts the "first and biggest impact" of the rain would be cow prices as supply tightens.

Mr Wilcock said slaughter figures produced weekly by Meat & Livestock Australia revealed that 900,000 extra cattle were killed in 2014 and nearly all were females.

"People have been liquidating the herd to maintain operations," Mr Wilcock said.

The man in charge of Australia's largest selling centre, Roma Saleyards manager Terry Hyland, said he was looking forward to reopening on Tuesday, January 13.

"The market closed very strongly in December and can only get better," Mr Hylands said.

"The rain is a big help. It will definitely give people a bit of confidence for sure."

While he will have to wait until he meets with livestock agents today to gauge numbers for their first sale of 2015, Mr Hyland estimated 2000 to 4000 head would come through the yards.

"It normally starts off fairly steady while people are away for the summer and then after two to three weeks the numbers build," he said.

As processing plants also crank up again, Roma-based TopX livestock agent Cyril Close said the rain would help maintain fat cattle supply into the coming months.

"The best part about the rain is that it means there'll be more fat cattle to sell in the next few months," he said.

"Towards the end of last year, in the last quarter, we weren't running out of fat cattle, but we were finding it hard to find them."