The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Paul and Caroline on October 21, 2016, 11:56:43 pm
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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?
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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 :roflanim: )
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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!
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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.
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That's interesting Rosemary - which cuts do you give up to get the sausages and burgers then?
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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 :roflanim: )
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....
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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.
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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
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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!" ;D .
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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!
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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.
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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
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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
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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?
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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.
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Yes it is Hogget I am doing. Winter comes early here so I would struggle to finish lambs as lambs without buying in quite a lot of hard feed. Keeping them through the winter doesn't cost much, 6 or 8 get put in 5 acres of woods and they more or less get left to their own devices.
I would think my 8 would require less hours of my labour over 18 months than a bottle fed lamb would get over 18 days!
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We keep all our lambs until 18 months - it is hogget, but as Sally says it has an amazing flavour, and you can cook it like lamb (ie pink if you want). Obviously it ties up the pasture but it's also rather lovely that the sheep get more of a sheepy life.... we sell at £12-£15 a kilo. Unashamedly. Comparable to Waitrose lamb, but hogget should be pricier since it is rarer and tastier (I think...). Also we don't sell much, since we've a modest smallholding, and I can't imagine the sheep every covering their costs!
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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!" ;D .
Womble you really should be on the telly, you’re talents wasted on scrubbing. Loads of money there....
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Do you not mean Womble scrubbing the lambs on telly?
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IT would make for a more realistic Countryfile. ' and later Womble will be washing bums....'
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Over 7 years ago We always sold hogget - better sized joints. A mix of lleyn/wiltshires. Half a lamb was £65 and whole £120. I struggled to sell it then so I would be hard pressed to sell it now for a considerable amount more.
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Good to see pricing too. Far too many smallholders and farmers havent a clue on overheads.
One of the issues of orphan lambs is the milk costs and time. It was only this year I really noted the price and it makes is non viable to take on orphans even though I did put them on Jersey milk for a while. I also had some rubbish lambs that required extra TLC vits and mineral drenchs. Saying that I think there was a serious mineral/cobalt problems in our flock.
It makes taking on orphans financially unviable and know plenty of farmers who wont bother with orphans for this reason.
For this reason you cant price them up based on the milk. Sadly this is what you have to take the hit on.
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We sell our zwartbles as 1/2 lamb @ £9 kilo. Jointed and vacuum packed. The butcher even puts labels on with what would be their shop price. It shows customers what a good saving they make by buying half a lamb in one go.
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I sell half lamb boxed & cut £75
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I sell half lamb boxed & cut £75
Same here :thumbsup:
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Year one we did two orphan lambs, a Suffolk and a Charollais. Last year we finished two Ryelands lambs having bought three in lamb ewes the year before, the other lambs kept for the flock. This year we again have finished two Ryeland lambs and have kept or sold the other lambs as breeding stock.
This year's lambs yield 16Kg and 14Kg I kept one half and the rest sold at £10 a kilo. It was presented as joints, chops and 500g of mince each per half lamb. They haven't had much feed along the way so the half lamb I have kept represents the profit.
Next year I will be doing more exact costs as by then we should be on a regular routine and have covered our start up costs in years one and two (hay racks, water troughs, some fencing etc) and should have a clarity over routine costs (feed, medical, pasture care, butchery). Everyone seems to be working costs on a per lamb basis but shouldn't part of the overhead of keeping the sheep be taken on e.g where do you account for keeping the ram and ewe involved?
We did the orphan lambs in year one for experience and I think a good way to start as we had all the lamb to abbatior experience first, then got the in lamb ewes so got that range of experience, then finally got a ram and did the tupping last year. But I think it was fortunate we chose bigger breeds for the orphan lambs as it would cost pretty much the same to rear a smaller one on milk.
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Suffolks, being a half-Down breed, should finish well on grass alone. Depending on the quality of grazing their growth sometimes seems to stall at some point during the Sumer but they pick up after that. Getting good quality orphans that have had colostrum in the first 6 hours, from ewes that had a booster jab four weeks before lambing, is key to avoiding vet bills.
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Hi
Just thought. We would add an update to this thread. We sent our 5 lambs away last week and the carcass weights ranged between 24.3 kg for the lightest Ewe and 32.7 kg for the entire ram. We have absolutely no idea how fat they are yet. They are hanging at the abattoir until Tuesday when they get delivered back to our butcher. We have an awful feeling that those weights are indicative of VERY fat lambs! Our strategy was based on time rather than weight and it was a conscious decision to send away at around 7 months. We had arrangements with a local farmer who was going to take our lambs with his at the end of October but he let us down at the last minute and we couldn't get across to Lockerbie ourselves until last week, so we had them for about 4 weeks longer than we had intended. The condition of the carcasses will inform us of what changes we will need to make with our next batch of orphan lambs in the Spring.
What us it they say? You live and learn!!
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If they're 8 month old Texel and Suffolk types and have been on good grass and not much or any cake, they shouldn't be too fat, and those weights are not necessarily out of order. The ram maybe a little, but ex-BH's Texel type commercials would be killing out at 28-29kgs by now, and not excessively fat. Suffolks tend to be a bit heavier than Texels anyway, I think - some of which is bone, I assume.
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That's the trouble Sally on the advice of my sheep farmer neighbour they were on more or less adlib cake, probably eating 750g per day and the grass was very lush......
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Ad lib cake... blimey... even my tame lamb crew don't get ad lib after the first 6 weeks of life ! daily feeds maybe but not ad lib. It's best to not put a set date on when they are going off- handle them throughout the time they are with you and feel their condition, some may be ready earlier than others. We just sent our last set of lambs off 2 weeks ago but they were Dorset x mule lambs so take a little longer to finish than suff or texel crosses which if we have any are normally are gone by early September.
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Well, at least you're not in Hampshire feeding ad lib cake! Fingers crossed they won't be too fatty :fc:. If it's just for your own use it won't matter so much anyway - you can cut the fat off when you eat it.
See what the butcher says, but you might decide to have more sausages, mince and diced if they are very fat. Although long slow cooked pot roast of a fatty cut ... :yum:.
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If my Southdowns were on ad lib cake they'd struggle to get through an 8ft gate by now. Also, on your costs, it's customary to amortise (gradually write off start up costs for capital items, in this case kit) over a number of years rather than include it all in the first year costs.
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That's the trouble Sally on the advice of my sheep farmer neighbour they were on more or less adlib cake, probably eating 750g per day and the grass was very lush......
.... was he selling you the cake? :innocent: