The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: suzi on August 02, 2023, 08:40:56 pm
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im trying to find what i did wrong.
i sent off 2 lots of older lambs (11 months) and 2 4 month old lambs
the whole lot is fatty grissly and chewy
i get the mutton (the slaughter didnt seperate out to tell me what was lamb and what was mutton)
they were fed on mole countrys ewe nuts as well as add lib hay grass and a mineral block. as well as lots of treat. all kept with love and kindness.
im doing it again next year.
what did i do wrong please
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What breed was they ?
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Breed, age, stress at slaughter, chilling and hanging the carcass can all affect meat quality. Are you sure the animals you sent are the ones you got back? If so my bet would be on stress or something that’s gone wrong with slaughter/hanging.
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Given your pork and lamb were all awful, I'm going to go with it's the slaughterhouse/butcher that you used that is at fault. Are there any others locally that you could use next time?
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neither lamb nor hogget (11 month old is not mutton) should be fatty ............. sounds like you may have been over feeding the hard feed and treats. When there is plenty of grass they do not need anything else. ...
If yr lambs are ready at 4 months then I'm guessing a commercial breed which definitely dont need extra feed. Rarer and hill breeds take at least 6 months to finish. We sent several of ours off at 14 months as hogget and these are tasty, with barest of fat.
Try less love and kindness in the form of feeding extras .... leave to eat grass with ocassional (3 times a week?) small hand full of nuts to keep them friendly.
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neither lamb nor hogget (11 month old is not mutton) should be fatty ............. sounds like you may have been over feeding the hard feed and treats. When there is plenty of grass they do not need anything else. ...
If yr lambs are ready at 4 months then I'm guessing a commercial breed which definitely dont need extra feed. Rarer and hill breeds take at least 6 months to finish. We sent several of ours off at 14 months as hogget and these are tasty, with barest of fat.
Try less love and kindness in the form of feeding extras .... leave to eat grass with ocassional (3 times a week?) small hand full of nuts to keep them friendly.
Feeding nuts shouldn’t make the meat tough or gristly. Yes the meat will be fattier but I wouldn’t expect it to be tough. Stress at slaughter would do it though, or not cooling the carcass properly or hanging it properly. Or it’s not been cooked properly…
What colour was the meat? Was it very dark red or a lighter red colour? How long was it hung for.
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Also cooking... All meat but especially home-reared meat needs time to relax after cooking. Remove from heat source and keep warm until the meat relaxes and the juices run out. Min 10 mins for a chop, half an hour plus for a joint. Do not cut until relaxed. Those minutes can make the difference between an unchewable lump and a gourmet meal.
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What breed was they ?
cheviot, icelandic X fresian and 2 fresian x cheviot
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Breed, age, stress at slaughter, chilling and hanging the carcass can all affect meat quality. Are you sure the animals you sent are the ones you got back? If so my bet would be on stress or something that’s gone wrong with slaughter/hanging.
there was 2 4 month old and 2 11 month olds. the slaughter didnt label the older as mutton as requested. so i put it down to that to start with. then the pork was crap too.
it was a longer journey (my fault i messed up sending some pigs. it made sense for them to go together).
they went the day before they were processed. so possibly stress of knowing what was coming??
they were hung longer than planned. my mum was dying in hospital. it was a 7 hour round trip to collect. so maybe
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Given your pork and lamb were all awful, I'm going to go with it's the slaughterhouse/butcher that you used that is at fault. Are there any others locally that you could use next time?
im moving so wont be using him again anyway. but he wasnt my local 1. i used him because he was the only place that could take bigger pigs. i had 3 that had to go. they were vile!
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neither lamb nor hogget (11 month old is not mutton) should be fatty ............. sounds like you may have been over feeding the hard feed and treats. When there is plenty of grass they do not need anything else. ...
If yr lambs are ready at 4 months then I'm guessing a commercial breed which definitely dont need extra feed. Rarer and hill breeds take at least 6 months to finish. We sent several of ours off at 14 months as hogget and these are tasty, with barest of fat.
Try less love and kindness in the form of feeding extras .... leave to eat grass with ocassional (3 times a week?) small hand full of nuts to keep them friendly.
the lambs wernt fat at all, they were just huge. they were born big too. the hogget (i didnt know that. thank you :) ) 1 was fat. the cheviot. he was a nasty lad and food was the only way i could do anything without risking a limb or 2 haha
i had the lambs grazing with my dairy ewes which did need the hard feed. they struggled to keep weight on.
the lamb is tough more than anything else. it cooks up like mutton!
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Also cooking... All meat but especially home-reared meat needs time to relax after cooking. Remove from heat source and keep warm until the meat relaxes and the juices run out. Min 10 mins for a chop, half an hour plus for a joint. Do not cut until relaxed. Those minutes can make the difference between an unchewable lump and a gourmet meal.
i cut a shoulder of lamb this morning i cooked last night. i couldnt cut it without a super sharp knife! the poor collies were chewing and chewing trying to get through it. the older collie x couldnt chew it (she has no issues with her teeth either!!)
i wish it was my cooking on this one
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How long were they hung for? We have hung from 2 days up to a week and been fine. Again we’ve dropped off at abattoir the night before and never had a problem, in fact it gives them time to settle from transport which can be stressful in itself.
Technically if the 11 month olds didn’t have their first 2 teeth pushed up they would have been killed as lamb. Once 2 teeth pushed up they have to split the carcass, but it would be hogget and not mutton.
I still reckon it’s an issue with hanging or chilling, or the cooking. Have you said anything to the butcher/abattoir? I guess you paid a fair amount of money for what you say is inedible meat; surely the butcher must have known it wasn’t going to be any good.
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ive had my dad cook it whos a t rained chef incase it was me. it was again awful. id prefer it was me tbh. thats the easy answer.
hanging wise, they were hung for 7 days i think. the meat is cut rough. the lamb chops look like theyve been torn rather than cut. the sausages some are thick sausages others are skinny and full of air. tbh they look like ive done them as a first attempt at home as a veggie not got a clue.
the sausages my romanian rescue dog (who eats anything and is fine) threw up on the sausages. ive binned 140kg of them now. i wont give them to the kids as they made the dog sick!
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It sounds like you should return to abattoir and complain ..... taking meat with you for them to try cooking .
Maybe time to name and shame and see if anyone else uses this abattoir?
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It sounds like you should return to abattoir and complain ..... taking meat with you for them to try cooking .
Maybe time to name and shame and see if anyone else uses this abattoir?
it could be me thats done something wrong. i dont want to name them and it be my fault. the last thing i want to do is cause a business any harm when it could be me thats done something wrong.
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I've had sheep meat hung from 0 to 9 days all been fine.
I *have* experienced poor butchering making meat tough. I don't know the mechanisms but I think it is a thing.
the lamb is tough more than anything else. it cooks up like mutton!
Mutton isn't tough if cooked moist, long and slow/low. Maybe worth trying?
Lamb/hogget meat that's eaten lots of cake does have a different texture to grass-fed, and considerably less flavour. But I haven't experienced it making meat tough.
Stress can wreck meat, 100%. Both texture and taste. From the gathering, being kept in overnight (if they are), handling at sorting and loading, the travel, what happened at the abattoir overnight, everything. We work hard to minimise all stresses and generally get awesome meat. We do sometimes take them to the abattoir a day early, and ask for them to be penned together and not mixed with others if possible. It's a small rural abattoir and usually a very nice, gentle atmosphere pervades.
Years ago, ex-BH kept getting some loin and leg meat condemned. I looked into possible causes, and realised the lambs were climbing over each other in a narrow offshoot in the overnight pen. We switched things around so they'd overnight in a larger, square pen, and we took our time letting them potter through the race to the loading area so they didn't jumble in the race either, and only ever had one condemned leg after that. (Which we think might have been a dog gripping a recalcitrant lamb as we gathered them.)
You may well be the very best transporter of livestock in the land, but just in case... I see a lot of newbies / inexperienced folks driving a trailer full of livestock the same as they'd drive with a load of hay. The livestock will be stressed and bruised to hell if driven like that. I ask new-to-it drivers to imagine they have a bucket full to the brim of slurry in the passenger footwell and don't want it slopping over the side :D. No sudden changes at all, decelerate don't brake, oh so gentle around bends, long slow acceleration, etc.
I have to say that in this case, my money's on stress (quite possibly before arrival at the abattoir), or that not being your meat. My predecessor here always slap marked all the pigs on both shoulders as she was sure she'd had someone else's pork once.
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Could it be that the pigs stressed the lambs and vice versa? I don’t know if that would happen, it’s just a thought if they were transported in the same trailer.
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I've had sheep meat hung from 0 to 9 days all been fine.
I *have* experienced poor butchering making meat tough. I don't know the mechanisms but I think it is a thing.
the lamb is tough more than anything else. it cooks up like mutton!
Mutton isn't tough if cooked moist, long and slow/low. Maybe worth trying?
Lamb/hogget meat that's eaten lots of cake does have a different texture to grass-fed, and considerably less flavour. But I haven't experienced it making meat tough.
Stress can wreck meat, 100%. Both texture and taste. From the gathering, being kept in overnight (if they are), handling at sorting and loading, the travel, what happened at the abattoir overnight, everything. We work hard to minimise all stresses and generally get awesome meat. We do sometimes take them to the abattoir a day early, and ask for them to be penned together and not mixed with others if possible. It's a small rural abattoir and usually a very nice, gentle atmosphere pervades.
Years ago, ex-BH kept getting some loin and leg meat condemned. I looked into possible causes, and realised the lambs were climbing over each other in a narrow offshoot in the overnight pen. We switched things around so they'd overnight in a larger, square pen, and we took our time letting them potter through the race to the loading area so they didn't jumble in the race either, and only ever had one condemned leg after that. (Which we think might have been a dog gripping a recalcitrant lamb as we gathered them.)
You may well be the very best transporter of livestock in the land, but just in case... I see a lot of newbies / inexperienced folks driving a trailer full of livestock the same as they'd drive with a load of hay. The livestock will be stressed and bruised to hell if driven like that. I ask new-to-it drivers to imagine they have a bucket full to the brim of slurry in the passenger footwell and don't want it slopping over the side :D. No sudden changes at all, decelerate don't brake, oh so gentle around bends, long slow acceleration, etc.
I have to say that in this case, my money's on stress (quite possibly before arrival at the abattoir), or that not being your meat. My predecessor here always slap marked all the pigs on both shoulders as she was sure she'd had someone else's pork once.
this is why i wont name the abittior. if its not their fault it just not fair.
it was actually a transporter that took them not me. he has great reviews. moved goats for me beforehand and they arrived happy. i honestly dont think it was that. but, it could have been slamming the brakes on that caused issues. to may different things
im trying to rule out whats in my control for next time. i dont want to cause any issues to a place that may have done nothing wrong
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Naming the abattoir doesnt have to shame it ..... it allows others who use that abattoir to give their experience.... if they have no issues then yes it maybe something you have done .
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Could it be that the pigs stressed the lambs and vice versa? I don’t know if that would happen, it’s just a thought if they were transported in the same trailer.
We send pigs and lambs off together, never had any issues. In separate sections of the trailer obviously.
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You know, with everything else you had going on in your life at the time, the best of us could've made a bit of a hash of the gathering, sorting, storing and loading. And it may not have been anything you did or didn't do anyway!
You won't be using that abattoir again because you're moving anyway.
So I would say, put it all behind you, know that many, many of us produce fabulous meat time and time again, and you can and will too. :hug:
But, a few thoughts to feed into your setting up when you've moved :-
- Take a bit of time choosing your system and process. Think about what you want to achieve, why you are doing it. Plumb the hive mind here for thoughts, cautionary tales, "this works well for me"s and so on
- Ditto all the above with each species of livestock you decide to try.
- Maybe don't try to do everything at once, especially if new to it all (which you aren't, now) or your confidence has been a bit shaken (which it has).
- Consider sending older animals in a different load from younger. That way you can be sure neither butcher nor abattoir muddles them up, and you can cook older meat in a way that suits it.
- Don't feel obliged to use the abattoir as the butcher, unless you know they make a great job of the butchering too. Lots of us book our animals through our chosen butcher, we take 'em to the abattoir (or send 'em, or some butchers can do the transport too) and collect the meat from the butcher (or some will deliver), and the slaughter fees are included in the invoice from the butcher. (They usually get a good rate because of their volumes, and some of them pass that saving on to their butchery customers.)
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Just out of interest what grade were the lambs on your kill sheet? Being fresian x it's possible they were lean even if they looked big and fluffy. Really lean meat can be stringy chewy and not very pleasant.
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i have no idea what grade they were tbh. they took after the cheviot more than fresian. i get the icelandic x fresian being a bit crap. id asked for him to be kept aside for the dogs. he wasnt. everything was mixed in. i do blame me for this not the abittior. at the end of the day i was suppossed to collect a few days later. it took over a week with my mum dying.
i will try less grain next time and more grass fed.
i was greener than grass trying to do it right. its all learning isnt it.
i think we had 1 mangalitsa pork chop. it was marbled. nothing else was. my son said it was the nicest pork hed ever had! so a win.
thats the only chop that looks different. when i get to the lamb chops ill grab a photo and you can see how its torn not cut. thats the only bit thats made me go that isnt my fault. i cant control that at all
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Is there a lab that will do a dna test on the meat. If it’s not your animals and is all horrendous you’d surely be able to sue for the whole sum of keeping and slaughter of your pigs and sheep?
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Could it be that the pigs stressed the lambs and vice versa? I don’t know if that would happen, it’s just a thought if they were transported in the same trailer.
It certainly happens with cattle. We tried loading cattle onto trailer with pigs behind partition & they were very reluctant! Combo of noise & smell I think. Never done again.