[ewesaidit]

How much are people currently charging for half a lamb?    Confess I've already agreed a price but would be very interested to see what others are doing.

Collected the meat tonight and weights were 26kg, 24kg, 22kg and 20kg (sorry don't have liveweights)

These were zwartbles tup lambs (usually the bigger ones are around 50kg at that age)

[DavidandCollette]

I work on £7 a kilo  as a start price but tend to round it down because I usually sell to friends. I got the price from a butcher at the farmer's market. Hope this helps.

[Kimbo]

we live in south Lancashire and bought half a Ryeland ram lamb ( 14 months old) 2 weeks ago from the lady we are buying our store Ryelands from.
Maybe she gave us a special price ( ?? a VERY special price?? ) as we are buying 5 lambs from her, but she didn't say so.
Anyway, we paid £42 for 21kgs of lamb butchered into a variety of cuts. And abs delicious it is too.
I admit that I did think " why am I growing my own lamb when I can buy it this cheaply?" but as they are primarily needed to eat our grass we are going ahead anyway

[TheSmilingSheep]

Well, waitrose sell at £17 a kilo for chops and at least £10 a kilo for pretty much everything else...
Bet yours is likely to be just as good.....

[Kimbo]

Much better I should think.
The more I think about this the more I think Ive paid next-to-nothing for this lamb 
Maybe I should just just top the fields instead!! 

[ewesaidit]

Thanks for the replies folks - went for £70 a half for the bigger two and £60 a half for the smaller two.

Kimbo - for info it cost me £41 to have each lamb 'processed' - transport to abbatoir and back, killing, butchering, packaging etc so you did well !!!

Only have a few boys to sell off mums each year and customers seem happy so that's the main thing for me

thanks again

[Porterlauren]

£42 kilos for a 21 kilo carcass. She'll be losing money.

[zwartbles]

You should be selling 1/2 lamb by weight. Work out a price per kilo not for 1/2 carcass. Cost in what it has cost you to feed expectant ewes before births, vaccinations for lambs and ewes, feed for lambs, transport to abattoir, cost of kill, cost of butchering and packaging.
Then add a profit regardless of who is buying it.
Your time and the life of the lamb is worth far more than you think. Do your customers buy from you because you are cheaper than the supermarket or because you look after your livestock and produce a quality product ??
We have a waiting list for our meat at £9 per kilo. Zwartbles meat is very low fat content, very sweet and we have never had a customer not come back.

Lecture over !!
Good luck.

[devonlady]

I always see what the local butcher is charging and put a fair bit on top of that being that my lambs are reared organically.

[Big Light]

We sell Hebridean hogget at £10 -£11 a kilo( butchered)  but selling in half or whole lambs so the cuts even out  - why under sell what is a fantastic product

[Kimbo]

Kimbo - for info it cost me £41 to have each lamb 'processed' - transport to abbatoir and back, killing, butchering, packaging etc so you did well !!!

That's also a LOT more than the best abbatoir/butcher here charges. For a Ryeland Hogg they charge £18. OK, you have to transport there and back yourself but that costs pence as abbatoir is less than 4 miles away. I must just live in a really cheap area! OR....is it that Im a lot closer to conurbations that most of you are so theres more competition? 

[Porterlauren]

Although I have jumped in, and said that at £42 a carcass, whoever is selling that is either really really nice, or really dumb lol. I do think that there is an upper limit to what I can charge for meat and not feel like i'm robbing folk. Whilst I accept that it would cost the same to buy from a supermarket, I'm not a supermarket, and I like the idea of selling people meat at a reasonable cost, which allows them to make a saving over shopping at the butchers, and allows me to make a profit, and in the case of boxed lambs, a greater profit that I could sell that lamb for live.

The thing is, if we work out our inputs, i'd imagine that it costs me a lot less to produce a lamb than some folk on here (i.e I don't feed any feed to the ewes or lambs AT ALL before, during or after lambing). However, I do cost in my time at an hourly rate, so maybe that would take it back up past those that don't cost theirs (a fatal error).

Having said that, I generally just look at what the going live weight / dead weight price is at that time, add on the fee to kill/butcher it and then a bit extra on top for the hassle.

So if I can sell a fat lamb for £70 at market, and it costs £25 to kill and butcher is properly, and then I throw say £40 on top for the hassle, that works out around £135. So something like £70 a half sounds reasonable. Bearing in mind most carcasses come back at 21kilo dw.

Edited to add - I suppose it also makes a difference how many lambs you have. I'd rather sell a lot, at a bit cheaper, than the odd one at a higher price. The other factor, is by pricing it so highly, it ends up becoming an occasional 'niche' product, as opposed to a regularly used food stuff, i.e at a slightly lower price I might actually sell them two lambs rather than one.

[Kimbo]

yes all good points. In truth people should factor in their time but I expect most don't. We are only supplying family and close friends so there wont be any sort of proper accounting going on ( and we will only be butchering 2 at a time) but for those of you with a lot of lambs to sell its only right that a proper price is paid. And I think most decent customers will pay a bit more for the knowledge that their meat has been ethically grown and dispatched.

[Backinwellies]

We sold ours at about £9/Kg last autumn (rounded them to £60, £65, and £70 for ease of payment .... this was to family and friends and was without individual packaging of cuts....   and all are reading their freezers for this years!  Vacuum packing costs an extra £8 ... I may get this done this year and pass on the cost.

This seems to be about the going rate

[ewesaidit]

   Really useful and interesting replies everyone, thanks

Found my slip from the butcher - Cost per lamb - transport to/from abbatoir £3.50, killing fee £13.80, butchering (includes packaging i.e. 4 chops in a pack) minus £1 per skin ..... so £40.80 each

Re the £9 per kilo - that would mean my biggest lamb at 26kg would be £117 per half - that's fantastic if you can get that -  Can I check if this includes the poorer value bits at that price i.e. flank or is it only for more premium cuts? 

Another way I look at it is .... if I put my zwartbles lambs through the market what would I get?   For the smaller lamb (20kg deadweight) I got in reality £80 selling privately which would probably be at the top end of what I would expect through the market at the moment?    Out of interest does anyone look at it on the basis of there should be an increase of x% compared to selling through a market?

Too scared to add up how much it costs me to raise them lol - really should though.  Being a small flock the costs are greater per head i.e. as has been discussed on other posts - vaccinating a small number, Vecoxan at £100 a litre to do maybe 15 - 20 lambs.  Lambing in January requires hay for quite some time after lambing as no grass until May,  also have high winter grazing costs as I like to rest my small fields and pay a premium to use the fields next door etc etc.    In essence I don't think profit really comes in to it and the way I look at it is that the money that comes in from the tup lambs going provides a little pot for the next winter's feeding.