Donegal Co-operative Livestock Mart

What to Expect

Donegal Co-operative Livestock Mart, at Milltown on the edge of Donegal Town, runs a sheep sale every Tuesday and a cattle sale every Friday, both daytime sales. Neither the mart nor the national mart directories publish a fixed start time, so ring ahead if you are timing a visit around the ring. It is a farmer-owned co-operative rather than a private auction house, and livestock trading remains its core business, serving south and west Donegal from the Bluestacks down towards the Leitrim and Sligo borders.

Like most modern Irish marts it runs online bidding alongside the ringside trade, so buyers who cannot make the drive to Milltown can still bid as stock comes through. That matters in a county this large, where a farmer in Inishowen and a buyer in the midlands can now compete for the same pen. The autumn is the mart’s busiest stretch, with weanling and store cattle numbers building from late August through October as farmers sell off summer grass. The mart also hosts occasional community initiatives on sale days, including free health checks run with visiting nurses, which is a fair reminder that a mart works as a weekly meeting point for scattered farming families as much as a trading floor.

Good to Know

• Next sheep sale: Tuesday 18 August 2026. Next cattle sale: Friday 21 August 2026. Both are daytime sales and no fixed start time is published, so ring ahead.
• Venue: Donegal Co-operative Livestock Mart, Milltown, Donegal Town, Co. Donegal, F94 HE97.
• Price: free to attend as a spectator. Buying and selling is between registered farmers and traders through the ring.
• Recurrence: sheep every Tuesday, cattle every Friday, year-round.
• Ring ahead before travelling for a specific class of stock, as special autumn weanling and store sales are added to the calendar.
• Contact: 074 972 1185.

Getting There

Milltown is on the edge of Donegal Town, a short drive from the junction where the N15 and N56 meet, and the mart yard has its own parking for farmers arriving with trailers. Donegal Town’s bus depot on the Diamond serves Bus Eireann routes to Sligo, Letterkenny and Dublin, but the mart itself is a working yard with livestock traffic coming and going on sale days, so a car is the sensible way in. Donegal Town sits at the meeting point of south and west Donegal, which gives this mart a wide catchment alongside the county’s other centres at Raphoe, Stranorlar and Carndonagh.