Terms of sale

The agreement between us

When you place an order through The Cattle Exchange, you enter into an agreement with us for the sale of the animals described in that order. The Cattle Exchange is the seller in every transaction on this site, and your contract is with us alone. These terms, together with the details recorded on your order and the policies to which they refer, constitute the whole of that agreement, and they take the place of anything said or understood before it.

Nothing offered on the platform is a sale of meat. Where the slaughter and cutting of an animal are added to an order, they are provided as services carried out on animals you already own, and they are dealt with separately in the sections that follow.

Placing an order

You are free to browse the site without an account, and you place an order once you have chosen the animals you wish to buy. Beginning checkout reserves those animals for you while you complete your purchase, so that they are not sold to another buyer in the meantime. If the purchase is not completed, the reservation lapses in due course and the animals return to sale. Your order is confirmed, and the sale concluded, once we have received confirmation from PayFast that your payment has succeeded.

Certain animals are offered on request rather than for immediate purchase. In those cases we confirm availability and a price for your approval before any payment is taken, and no sale arises until you have accepted that quotation and paid.

Prices and payment

All prices are quoted in South African Rand and include value-added tax where it applies. The great majority of animals are sold at a fixed price per head, which is the price shown and the price you pay. A limited number are sold by live weight, at a stated rate per kilogram, in which event the final amount is determined objectively on a certified scale and settled in the manner described in our pricing and weigh-in policy. Whatever the basis, the full amount payable, including any delivery, is set out on your order before you are asked to pay, and no charge is ever added that you have not seen and agreed.

Payment is made to The Cattle Exchange through PayFast, our payment provider. Your card details are entered within PayFast’s own secure environment and are never transmitted to, seen by, or stored on our systems, so that the security of your payment rests with an established provider rather than with us.

Delivery, collection and the passing of risk

Each listing indicates whether the animals may be collected, delivered, or both. Where you collect, we ask that you arrange transport suited to the animals and satisfy yourself as to their condition before loading them. Where you ask us to arrange delivery, we quote for livestock transport and confirm both the cost and the expected timing with you before anything is charged. The full arrangements appear in our delivery and collection policy.

Responsibility for an animal passes to you when it is handed over, whether on collection or on delivery and acceptance. The position should an animal be injured or lost before that point is addressed in our mortality and risk transfer policy.

Optional slaughter and cutting

After purchase, and entirely at your election, you may ask us to arrange the slaughter and cutting of the animals you have bought, for your own personal, cultural or religious use. Any meat that results belongs to you and is not for resale. In keeping with the Meat Safety Act 40 of 2000, slaughter is carried out only at a registered abattoir, and cutting only at a facility holding a Certificate of Acceptability. The confirmation you give when adding these services, and the way in which such orders are handled, are set out in the own-use and processing declaration.

Cancellation, refunds and your statutory rights

You may cancel a paid order at any time before the animals are handed over to you, and we will refund you in full. Because each animal is a specific and living thing, a change of mind after an animal has been handed over is not, by itself, a basis for return; where an animal is materially not as we described it, however, we will put the matter right. The detail of how cancellations and refunds are handled is set out in our returns and cancellations policy. None of this displaces the rights conferred on you by the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, which apply in addition to these terms.

The commitment we make to you

The Cattle Exchange stands behind every animal it sells. We are accountable to you for your order from the moment your payment is confirmed until the animals are in your hands, and we hold ourselves to the accuracy of what we tell you about each animal and to the standards described across these policies. Where something is not as it should be, we would rather hear from you than not, and we will work with you to set it right.