The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: freethyme on August 11, 2011, 11:20:22 pm
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I have got 5 :sheep: :sheep: :sheep: :sheep: :sheep:, six months old lambs (my first ever time), and plan to send 3 :sheep: :sheep: :sheep: off to slaughter in the next few weeks. A number of people (well 3) have asked me if they could have a whole or half a lamb. What I would like to know is, how much is a fair price to charge for a whole lamb which is ready for the freezer. If any of you experience folks can advice I would be very happy. Thank you for reading this message.
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A) Find out how much it is going to be to kill, hang, cut and pack
B) Ask the abattoir how much the price is 'on the day' i.e. the price they would pay you if they were buying it from you.
Add A + B = C
If you can get away with putting a little extra on top you will be lucky as most people won't want to pay more than that (C).
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I would also add in the costs you have incurred whilst rearing the animals.
It may be worth looking in a few butchers and see what sorts of prices per kilo they are charging. If you can undercut them by a few pennies people will feel they are getting a good deal (cos, well they are).
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I would also add in the costs you have incurred whilst rearing the animals.
It may be worth looking in a few butchers and see what sorts of prices per kilo they are charging. If you can undercut them by a few pennies people will feel they are getting a good deal (cos, well they are).
I can agree with MikeM about adding in costs incurred i.e a bit extra on top if you can get away it. As to the undercutting, someone much cleverer than me has worked this out. The person at the start of the chain makes nothing or a few pennies per animal as there is a price the consumer will pay and the others i.e abattoir/butcher want their cut (if you'll forgive the pun). All you do is eat better yourself. Eventually, when you get fed up of subsidising others to eat as well as you do, you will become as cynical as me and limit your production.
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We pay £100 for whole lamb jointed from a neighbour, it comes in a big poly bag and we have to pack/wrap it ourselves for the freezer. We're due one next week. This is in North Yorkshire by the way, the price of lamb is horrendous in the butchers,only yesterday i paid £6.38 for two fat chops as a treat! :o but they were scrummy and worth it! ;D
Don't sell yourself short but don't rip 'em off or they won't come back!
HTH
Mandy :pig:
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Maybe I'm a bit thick this morning but...
The advice, which looks good to me, is to charge the going rate per kilo deadweight plus slaughter and butchery costs.
Then some seem to think it sensible to 'add on the costs incurred in rearing'.
Hrmph. Surely the idea is that the 'going rate per kilo deadweight' covers the normal costs of breeding, rearing and a little bit of profit?
I know that sometimes this equation does not work and farmers sell every animal at a loss. But these are not such times.
Pet/orphan lambs are rarely very good quality carcases, so there's already a bit of uplift in charging the average deadweight.
I have no problem whatsoever in adding a bit of profit to A+B=C for being prepared to offer the service and the option of lovely home-reared meat to your friends. I just bridled at the notion that somehow the farmer should not be recompensed for his/her rearing costs but that the hobbyist should!
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i don't think you are thick this morning or any other morning the hobbyist rearer is wanting paid twice for the same thing as their inference is that there stock is better than a proper farmer could ever produce there was an angry few days postings on the pig section on this very subject with Dan getting embroiled in it the big thing to remember with sheep/lambs this year is they are dearer than last year :farmer:
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FYI, Longtown Mart's average liveweight price yesterday was around 183 ppk. So if your lamb weighs 45kg on his hooves at home, £80 would be a very good price for him/her in the ring. Pet/orphan lambs usually get 10-15%, or even more, less than a good average commercially-reared lamb, so £65-£70 would probably be a more realistic expectation. (Note, all lambs will lose a kilo or two between the scales at home and being weighed at the mart.)
Our butcher charges £20-£25 for slaughter and butchering. All cuts are wrapped suitably for freezing right away and are labelled with cut and weight.
So your £100 per lamb is probably just about right, Mandy.
BTW, for pet/orphan lambs you would be pleased to get 45% deadweight, ie, 45kg at home returning just over 20kg meat. At £100 per whole lamb, that'd be £5/kg overall.
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Birmingham Wholesale Market prices on 8th Aug was £6.20 kg for English lamb so then one has to pay for cutting it up I presume?
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i don't think you are thick this morning or any other morning the hobbyist rearer is wanting paid twice for the same thing as their inference is that there stock is better than a proper farmer could ever produce there was an angry few days postings on the pig section on this very subject with Dan getting embroiled in it the big thing to remember with sheep/lambs this year is they are dearer than last year :farmer:
I don't think anyone was saying that but the price the abattoir pays does not (usually) cover the cost of rearing. Large farms work on economies of scale and are subsidised through SFP.
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jacquip what you have said is exactly what i have said only not the same words no farming commodity really covers the cost of rearing/production eggs/milk /beef/pork and lamb potatoes veg all are controlled by the money men with every one making more than the primary producer :farmer:
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:-[
Where's the post on the pig debate, I must have missed that one.
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o that was ages ago will flick through it to get it up :farmer: page 15 on the pig board title what do you charge for sausages :farmer:
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Thanks.
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I charge £125.00
it costs me £25 for it to be killed and butchered, packed, labelled ect and boxed for the freezer, so I make £100 per lamb, ( well not sure if I can say that I make any money if you look at the bigger picture)
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We pay £100 for whole lamb jointed from a neighbour, it comes in a big poly bag and we have to pack/wrap it ourselves for the freezer. We're due one next week. This is in North Yorkshire by the way, the price of lamb is horrendous in the butchers,only yesterday i paid £6.38 for two fat chops as a treat! :o but they were scrummy and worth it! ;D
Don't sell yourself short but don't rip 'em off or they won't come back!
HTH
Mandy :pig:
have you tried leeds market and getting mutton. it used to be dead cheap. but that was 5 years ago.
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Yuk Mutton, can't stand the smell or the taste, neighbour once gave us some and it was awfull never again! so will stick with the lamb thanks.
Mandy :pig:
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About 6 years ago a friend of ours, one man band with 200 sheep, was asked by defra ( wash mouth out with soap) to do a 12 month total costing paying himself the national minimum wage for every hour he worked on the sheep, he had to include all transport costs ,worming , sheering , drenching , fodder, haylage etc etc, by the time he got them to market he was loosing more than £30 per lamb......
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When you hand it over you might need to point out again that they are paying £** per kilo as it may come as a bit of a shock when they see just how 'little' 1/2 a lamb is when it is jointed, often they expect to see a bin bag full of meat, not a carrier bag.
A few years back (when we last bought a whole jointed lamb from a neighbour) it worked out at about £90 (the first time, about 13 years ago it was £45).
:farmer:
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Thanks for all the help and advice to you all.
The first three lambs have gone to slaughter today.
We have agreed a price of £100 per lamb, which seems far.
Again thanks for help.
Nigel
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Grazing rent = 1 x lamb/yr so per lamb this yr is £46/12 = £3.83 (plus the odd bit of fencing, which I have no idea how to factor in)
Ewe slaughter/Packing = £36
Fuel Costs = About a tenner
Retail cost of half box of lamb:£75
Given that I grow fairly big lambs (Wilts horns are quite big) and they are a rare breed with the associated cachet etc, I charge £80/half lamb or £150 for a whole one.
So per lamb profit (average) = £175 - 49.83 = 125.17
Nb - this does not include vets fees or all the bloody feed I had to chuck at them this winter (although most of it was swapped for the services of my ram) - so I reckon its more like £100, I know Wilts horns tend not to do well at marts, so I'm happy, if it was a 'commercial' lamb, it'd barley be worth it as yer getting over £80 for em on a good day.
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About 6 years ago a friend of ours, one man band with 200 sheep, was asked by defra ( wash mouth out with soap) to do a 12 month total costing paying himself the national minimum wage for every hour he worked on the sheep, he had to include all transport costs ,worming , sheering , drenching , fodder, haylage etc etc, by the time he got them to market he was loosing more than £30 per lamb......
Of course all farmers should sell up, get jobs in the rat race, where they may just be able to earn enough money to pay for:
- holidays in the countryside
- a gym subscription to stay fit
- evening classes to stimulate themselves
- some ground and four-legged creatures - oh, and to pay someone to look after them when they're on those holidays...
- camps and adventures for the kids
- probiotics, detoxes, facials and all the other treatments needed to assuage the effects of modern living on the body
- a therapist to help them think they can find a reason to get up in the morning
- etc etc etc
Check my tag line. :)
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the last few years we have been selling our sheep as hoggets boned and rolled charging 2.70 per lb weighed on the bone... that is weighed then deboned. we tried this with lambs and people complained at how little meat there was.
we have a fixed maximum of £130 per whole hogg and we often hit the max with our suffolk and suffolk X
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When I worked out what it cost me rear my lambs and get them freezer ready and balanced it against what I charged - £120.
- including everything - I broke even I think I may even have made a very small profit.
Which is great 'cos that even included the fuel to the abbatoir ( 80-100 miles away) and all the running around collecting & delivering ;D
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how can i work out what a live lamb weighs? (shetland)
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I'm getting in a bit late on this one, but I wanted to put a word in for mutton. It's not an easy thing to buy around here, but definitely coming back into fashion with chefs and for some people it's a taste of their childhood. I run a lot of my sheep on past two years and very rarely have any trouble selling the meat. My butcher has a habit when he puts labels on the joints of pricing them up at what he would sell at retail, I just take a bit off, thereby giving an obvious discount. I still make a lot more than selling on the hoof, but then there's a lot more time, expense and trouble involved.
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to price our lambs each year we take the price we could get from our local livestock auction then add on the cost of slaughter last years worked out £85 - £90 (- auction fees) market price plus £25 k&k so the customers paid £110 works out well for us if no one wants to pay that we take them to market the profit margin is still the same. we have never put any through auction so the prices must be fair.
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how can i work out what a live lamb weighs? (shetland)
I have scales - but I use them for my pigs & haven't tried them with lambs. Other than that I don't know. :-[ sorry
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Yes, we weigh ours. After years of practice you get a good feel for it - but even so, the scales can often surprise.
As far as I know there's no rule of thumb like there is with pigs or horses, taking girth and length measurements and doing a calculation.
Are you wanting to weigh them to know if they're ready for market / slaughter, or to calculate the dose rate of medicines?
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We set up a weighing machine a few years ago. It involves a spring balance reading beyond what you expect your sheep to weigh, so for ours it's probably 100kgs (not going out to look :)) - the spring balance is the expensive bit but we already had ours. Hang it somewhere secure, either in a door frame or build an A frame outdoors, construct a sling for the sheep such as a sack tied at each end and passed securely under the belly, then hook it all up. Obviously you have to make sure the sheep doesn't wriggle but after a few you get a feel for the true weight of all your stock so it's not something you would do for every single one.
Another way is to weigh yourself, then pick up the sheep, step back on the scales and subtract the difference - not many scales weigh high enough for that to work with a mature animal, even if you could lift it.
You could perhaps also buy a very expensive weighing crate but for a small flock it wouldn't be cost-effective.
I have a photo of our set-up if anyone wants to visualise it.
More usually when judging whether your lambs/hoggets or older sheep are ready for market, you would assess their condition score, as this is more relevant to readiness for slaughter than their actual weight which varies greatly with breed and age.
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Sounds great, FW.
Another way is to weigh yourself, then pick up the sheep, step back on the scales and subtract the difference.
That's why I asked if it was for assessing readiness to slaughter or to dose - if you can do this, it's nothing like 40kg yet! :D Another thing I've done in the past is pick up the collie dog, put it down and pick up the sheep - I know my collies weigh about 16-18kg, so I can judge if the lamb is more or less than that this way. (Doesn't work with young collie dogs, they wriggle too much! ;D)
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Sounds great, FW.
Another way is to weigh yourself, then pick up the sheep, step back on the scales and subtract the difference.
That's why I asked if it was for assessing readiness to slaughter or to dose - if you can do this, it's nothing like 40kg yet! :D Another thing I've done in the past is pick up the collie dog, put it down and pick up the sheep - I know my collies weigh about 16-18kg, so I can judge if the lamb is more or less than that this way. (Doesn't work with young collie dogs, they wriggle too much! ;D)
Both great ideas ;D
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Surely it also depends on breed a commercial breed will be generally they are cheaper than a rare breed. (Not much but enough I should think)
I'd like to add I dont keep sheep but I'm putting it out there