[Paul and Caroline]

Hi

I am a first time sheep keeper and have 5 lambs going away in the next couple of weeks and have a few people asking for meat. What price is a sensible figure to ask? My rough figures come out at £134 per lamb to produce - I know I can bring this down by quite an amount next year but wondered what people were selling theirs for, either by the kilo or half/full lambs?

[Big Light]

Cam i ask how did you get to £134 per lamb as that is above the value of them -  i assume you have been adding start up costs (or have you been feeding them gold leaf )

[devonlady]

My grandson has Jacobs, grazing non sprayed grass, no artificial fertilizers, so, in all but name, organic. £9 per kilo and he had orders for this year's lambs (not many as the ram was duff) from last year!

[Rosemary]

We sell lamb boxes at £11 / kg - that includes a pack of burgers and a pack of sausages plus the lamb.

This year our lambs were smaller than ususal generating about 10kg of saleagble meat per lamb.

[Womble]

That's interesting Rosemary - which cuts do you give up to get the sausages and burgers then?

[Paul and Caroline]

Cam i ask how did you get to £134 per lamb as that is above the value of them -  i assume you have been adding start up costs (or have you been feeding them gold leaf )

Hi they are orphan lambs and we paid £15 each for them and we used 2 bags of Lamlac at £70+ per bag until they were weaned onto grass and have been giving them adlib pellets. Averaging it out over the 32 weeks that we will have had them - they will have got through roughly 500g per day each. Then two lots of Heptivac at £24 per bottle plus FEC tests, 2 vet visits plus treatment. We are working on £35 per lamb for slaughter and butchery plus transport costs (we are 90 miles away from our nearest abattoir.) I see Rosemary returned just 10kg of meat from some of her lambs this year. We have a Suffolk ram which is 60kg ish and we are fairly confident that the rest are over 40kg, so we are hoping, at a 50% kill out weight, to have about 20kg of produce to sell for each lamb.  At even £9 per kilo - and assuming we sell the lot - that would be c. £180 per lamb - and yes I know that I am being wildly optimistic! We are retaining some Ewe lambs to breed from for Spring 2018 so our early feed costs should reduce dramatically then. I would be very interested to know how much it costs you experienced guys to fatten your lambs....... Especially anyone who keeps orphan lambs....

[oor wullie]

I bought at the autumn lamb sales from the bottom cut, late or small lambs or poorer island lambs and minimise costs by making no attempt to fatten them until it can be done on grass the following summer. (So they get killed at 18-24 months, not sure what weight they will be but will find out next month when we kill a couple. Kill them the first winter and they will only be 10kg or so DW).
 I would only buy blackies or Cheviots as they have to be hardy enough to survive a winter in our woods without much attention.

Cost per head is roughly;
Purchase - 15
Diesel to get home from the mart - 3
Worming/spot-on - 5
Hay - 6
Energy bucket - 5
Hard feed - 5
Diesel to abattoir and back - 10
Kill and cut - 35
Overheads (contribution to fencing, foot shears, hay rack etc, etc, etc) - 20

So about 100 per head and not a lot of hours labour but it is a system that wouldn't work for everyone.

[shep53]

I see that no one has any grazing costs at all  no rent /mortgage/ sprays/ fertilizer / topping etc .    PAUL AND CAROLINE     25kg of lamlac at £70+ is  expensive and 2 bags for 5lambs a lot ( I paid £52 and used 1bag for 4 lambs weaned at 6wks old )         Don't understand  how you say they had ad-lib creep and yet are 8months old before killing , you could have changed from expensive creep pellets to a cheaper ration ,but good grass would have got them fat. While I think you are optimistic about your killing out % , you don't mention breed just  the Suffolk ? glad your still looking at a profit

[Womble]

I see that no one has any grazing costs at all  no rent /mortgage/ sprays/ fertilizer / topping etc.

Nor any labour costs  .


"What did you do at the weekend?" people ask. "Oh, mainly scrubbing sh*t off lamb b0ll0cks" I reply. "It's a nasty job, but at least I make a ton of money from it!"  .

[Paul and Caroline]

I see that no one has any grazing costs at all  no rent /mortgage/ sprays/ fertilizer / topping etc .    PAUL AND CAROLINE     25kg of lamlac at £70+ is  expensive and 2 bags for 5lambs a lot ( I paid £52 and used 1bag for 4 lambs weaned at 6wks old )         Don't understand  how you say they had ad-lib creep and yet are 8months old before killing , you could have changed from expensive creep pellets to a cheaper ration ,but good grass would have got them fat. While I think you are optimistic about your killing out % , you don't mention breed just  the Suffolk ? glad your still looking at a profit

Hope people don't mind us responding to the various comments on here but We are hungry for any advice and guidance We can get. Much of what I have done has been as a result of tips and advice and We are the first to accept we have an awful lot to learn! We actually have 7 lambs but only 5 are going to slaughter, the other 2 will be retained for breeding next year. We bought two bags of lamlac and used maybe a quarter to a third of the second bag and we weaned at 35 days as recommended by our neighbour who is a large scale sheep farmer. He also told us to give them adlib pellets. The consensus did seem to be that orphan lambs do need a bit of extra help when they are not getting mums milk.

As for the cost of the feed where I am in SW Scotland there is one supplier only so we have to pay their prices. The delivery costs negate any cheaper 'mail order' options.

Is a 50-55% kill out weight unrealistic? Again the research I had done hitherto all pointed to this as the usual ratio.... What do people think is a more realistic ratio to expect?

We rent out 4 acres of our land to another farm and for that we get all of our land/grass management taken care of.

The other lambs apart from the Suffolk are Texel crosses


Keep it coming please, every little helps!

[twizzel]

50% is about right, I wouldn't expect any more. Ram lamb will have a lower KO weight if he is entire.


Few points here- if your lambs are overfat then charging per kilo may not be as fair as it sounds, people don't want to pay for fat. We too rear around 15 tame lambs per year and kill all of them by November, worked out it costs roughly £80 to rear, kill and cut a lamb- they are heptavac, wormed, flystriked etc. 20kg bag of milk powder is £36, we use 1 bag to 2 lambs, wean at 6 weeks, on a Shepherdess feeder. Our cost per lamb this year has been a little more as we had one put down post weaning due to white muscle disease, lost one to vit B deficiency and had to have the vet surgically castrate a ram lamb in June (long story!). We also kept 1 well grown ewe lamb who is now running with a ram. Our abattoir put up kill from £13 to £18 thanks to skin prices being too low, so now for kill and cut we pay £30. We bought 8 shearling ewes in August so this year was our last year rearing tame lambs, after 5 years I am fed up of mixing endless amounts of milk powder !


Have you weighed your lambs? They can be very deceptive, what looks like a heavy big lamb actually can be the opposite and vice versa. I would say for your first year sell per 1/2 lamb and do a flat fee per half rather than faffing around with weights- then if they are a little too fat people aren't paying for fat. £9/kilo for breast, shoulder is pricey, I think £80/half for a 10-12kg half lamb is about right- I know we couldn't get much more.

[Big Light]

Your abbatoir and butcher costs along with the 180 mile round trip seem cheap - good luck if you can get it at that - we are selling at around £11 per kg but with very little inputs. Good luck with your venture

[shep53]

Vital that you respond so that it makes you and us THINK . Bag and bit for 7 lambs sounds better , 35 days weaning spot on and ad lib pellets definitely , my point being that you seem to say that they have been on pellets all  summer and yet not  finished in 12- 16 wks .     Weighed at home say 40kg with a full stomach after killing maybe  18- 19kg  , solid breeds like beltex /dutch texel can kill over 50% and hill breeds with heavy skins and heads  as low as 42%  .  IN d&g you will have TARF VALLEY and MURRY FARMCARE , HARBRO

[Daleswoman]

I am picking up my lambs from the butcher on Tuesday. They are pure Shetland and Shetland crosses, and I'm expecting them to give me approx 10kg of meat each. Butcher says the meat is beautiful - not too fat, and the lambs are only small because of the breed. I am charging £8 a kilo, which is in line with local prices and which I reckon will give me approx £3 a kilo 'profit' - ie for my labour. This is our second year, our costs last year were higher due to buying sheep, inexperience and not having economies of scale with heptavac and feed costs.  The lambs themselves have only had grass (plus hay in the last few weeks) since  weaning but the costs include their mothers' feed - hay and ewe nuts - during the winter and lambing.

I'm interested that some people seem to be saying they keep their lambs over winter and into a second year - are these not hoggetts by then? Also, there is the additional cost of feeding them over the winter, not to mention the extra labour! I like to reduce my stock numbers to a minimum for the winter.

Hope that helps?

[SallyintNorth]

Yes, if kept to over a year old it's hogget.  Hogget is wonderful, depth of flavour but you can cook it like lamb.  In my experience, with Shetlands and Shetland crosses also, there's quite a bit more meat after a winter, and even more towards the end of the second summer.  As they only need grass, and a little hay in winter, for that time, plus a fluke drench or two if yours is a fluke area, the additional costs are small -  if you are not accounting for the pasture itself - and the additional meat should cover them. 

Does anyone do accounting including pasture?  If an acre is £90 a year, at 5 sheep per acre, that's £1.50 per month per sheep, so an extra 6 months would cost an additional £9; an extra 10 months £15.  Worth it in my book, on every level.