mEDIAWIz and the Wagga Wagga City Council have joined forces to take the Wagga Wagga Livestock Marketing Centre into new territory and launched an official open day at the Wagga sale yards on December 1.

Peter Mortimer is the director of mediawiz and grew up in Wagga Wagga with ties to the farming sector.

Mr Mortimer’s brother Chris deals in livestock and works at the weekly sheep sales came up with the idea after visiting several sales and observing the farmers behaviour patterns.

“Sale yards have been a meeting place for farming families for over a century.

“The trip to town usually included a large grocery shop and an outing for the family,” Mr Mortimer said.

“With more than two sales a week the Wagga LMC provides an extremely focused target audience for suppliers of agricultural necessities.

“With down time of two to three hours at each sale the farmer is an attractive target for marketers.

“We are trying to market the saleyards as a service centre where farmers can do their shopping in one place,” he said.

There will be four field days held throughout the year with stallholders and a variety of items from

clothing through to

heavy machinery and

tractors.

“The farmers can’t park their trucks in town so we thought why not bring the town to the farmers,” Mr Mortimer said.

The new concept is also heavily based on animal health and nutrition with buyers able to have their pen of lambs drenched and vaccinated before leaving the yards.

“We offer the hobby farmer who might not have the facilities to drench their sheep a service of vaccinating and drenching.

“This will see healthier animals leaving the saleyards,” Mr Mortimer said.

Mr Mortimer said he had received nothing but positive feedback from the open day and said if everything goes to plan there will be another field day held in March 2012.

“We will be holding a survey with all the sponsors involved and let them decide when the next field day will be held, but we are hoping to hold another one in March,” he said.