WA's two major saleyards, Midland and Katanning, have regularly offered a combined total of close to 40,000 sheep per week for the past two months.

Everybody involved in the industry expected sheep numbers offered for sale to decrease, with many believing it would have happened by now.

But if anything, the opposite is happening with more sheep coming onto the market each week.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its livestock figures for the 2006-07 season last year, revealing the national sheep flock had decreased, down 6pc to 85.7m.

WA's drop of 9pc was the biggest in Australia with the next biggest decline 4pc in NSW.

Since December last year there have been estimates that some 200,000 WA sheep were trucked across the border and of the big yardings at Midland and Katanning, a significant percentage went straight to abattoirs.

WAMMCO, WA's leading lamb processor, is even processing mutton such is the supply at the moment.

So where are the sheep coming from?

Landmark livestock manager, Eric Broad, said there were several factors responsible for the current large yardings.

"In many areas of the State the season still hasn't truly broken and there hasn't been any real indication it will any time in the short term," he said.

"Our network is reporting that while current numbers consist of the normal turnover of stock expected at this time of year, there is also a large number of sheep being offloaded due to lack of feed in some areas."

Mr Broad said while it was hard to quantify the break-up of how many sheep had been sent over east and how many extra sheep had been slaughtered in the last few months, he estimates that there is at least a 30pc reduction in the ewe flock from last year.

He said despite the large numbers on offer, prices were still holding up reasonably well.

Elders commercial sheep manager, Ian White, said there were a large number of Esperance sheep coming into Katanning last week due to a poor start to the season in that region.

"It is surprising, maybe there are more sheep out there than we estimated," he said.

"With the combination of sheep going over east and being sold for processing already this year, we fully expected numbers to drop off, yet last week numbers offered actually increased."