Untagged livestock at saleyards

From time to time, an animal may arrive at your saleyard without a tag.

Animals must not be sold or sent from the saleyard without being tagged.

Animals arriving untagged

Your saleyard PICA should do the following.

1 Tag the animal.
2 Register the animal to the saleyard NAIT number.
3 Record the movement to the saleyard from the vendor (sending NAIT number).
4 Record the movement from the saleyard to the purchaser.
5 Send an email to NAIT with the details (number of animals, date of movement, sending PICA).

By completing these steps, you fulfil the legal requirement of notifying NAIT of untagged animals arriving at the sale.

We don't recommend returning an untagged animal to the farm of origin. However, if an untagged animal is returned, you must notify NAIT.

When submitting a new-born animal registration, the saleyard PICA must provide:

Large and aggressive animals can be sometimes risky to tag. In these cases, your saleyard PICA can declare them ‘unsafe to tag’ in NAIT.

Unsafe to tag (UTT) animals are exempt from tagging under the following conditions.

1 The animal can only be sent to a meat processor, game estate, safari park or zoo.
2 The saleyard PICA must record a sending movement (exempt animal) in NAIT before the animal leaves the yards. If the animal arrived at the sale untagged, it can be returned to the farm of origin. There is no need to record this movement.
3 The unsafe animal must be clearly identifiable by the person receiving it.
4 Standardised Meat Industry guidelines require a red ‘X’ sprayed on the back of the animal to identify it as unsafe to tag.
5 UTT animals are subject to a $13 (excl. GST) UTT levy per head, collected by the meat processor and charged to the owner of the animal.