The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: jaykay on May 27, 2014, 06:55:05 pm
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So I swapped from Rough Fells to Shetlands, because I'm on my own now and I don't have good sheep pens (I don't have any sheep pens!) or any way to build any, and the Rough Fells, much as I totally love them, were more than I could manage.
I can manage my little Shetlands in the wooden-hurdles-and-string race that I have made.
But.
I just took 7 tup hoggs to the mart. The spring lamb trade was excellent, they were fetching £130+. My Shetland hoggs weighed 31kgs on average, one weighed 36kgs and they put him through separately. The spring lambs that weighed 36kgs fetched £75-£80. Mine fetched £21.
Now granted they were lambs not hoggs, and there is more meat on a Texel than there is on a Shetland. But not four times as much!!
I can't afford to keep sheep if this is all I can sell them for. I don't have enough outlets to sell meat directly and folk round here won't pay much for it anyway.
It makes the finding of a suitable crossing tup even more urgent.
Very discouraged this evening.
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No wonder you are discouraged. No idea on the price of Shetland lamb but it will not be cheap in the shops !
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I'm afraid that's par for the course with some breeds at local marts. You will really only make a good/fair price on commercial breeds such as the texel, suffolk, charollais and their crosses - they will be the ones going over the £100 mark. At my local mart the Shetland breeds and similar make very little money. That always been the case at my local mart anyway for years and years.
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:hug: I can imagine how that makes you feel. :(
I could do a big explanation about carcase conformation, butchery costs and potential outlets, but it won't help you any.
Would you be able to sell your hoggs butchered in boxes? Otherwise direct to a butcher selling rare breed / native breed sheep? Or local restaurant?
Oops, just realised you said you can't do any of that. :(
If they haven't all gone, I'd buy one butched; we're just about out of lamb here, and I won't have any for more than 12 months! (He won't let me butch any of our commercials, they're worth too much money, and I don't have any males left over from last year.)
Sorry you had such a miserable day :hug:
If they're only going to fetch that sort of money in the mart as finished hoggs, you may as well sell the lambs in the store in the first year, hadn't you?
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How frustrating :( , I know how you feel. That price in the mart is an insult to all your hard work.
Shetland meat is so lovely, people don't realise what they are missing. Is there any way you could drum up trade locally, and sell direct? I am constantly pushing my lamb/hogget, and it is a effort, but once people have tried it they usually come back for more. We have bought a cheap freezer so at least we can keep some in store.
The fleece and skins make some profit too, but it does involve time and travel...
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Absolutely ridiculous but that is the way of it, surely you can talk to a few butchers even if you can't sell privately...
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Problem is people at market buying finished hogs will be local abattoirs, butchers, processors with large contracts etc and they will want a fleshy commercial carcass. So if your only outlet to sell finished stock is the market, I think you'll have to breed a more commercial type that will sell better.
I would try to sell direct to local customers (not butchers, again I don't think they would be interested) but if you are really struggling I think your only choice is to breed what sells at market.
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can't help with market,but shetland tastes delicious (i got some from a TASer last autumn)
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Hi Jaykay :wave:
Those prices arent very nice :( not good at all, I found a butcher to buy my lambs off me but I crossbreed my shetland lambs, you can see photos of some of my lambs in the post I put up with some photos in
Either crossbreed your lambs or find someone to buy them off you?
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Yes, going to use a crossbreeding tup next year, thinking of a blue Texel (reasoning being I prefer the look of them and it'll keep the fleeces coloured and worth spinning too, Charollais don't have sufficient fleeces as newborns for where I live, no-one has heard of Charmoise round here and if they haven't heard of it......I'll leave someone else to educate them and I'll use something they recognise!)
I sent them all Sally, but thanks for the offer to buy one.
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The price in wales is ok about 60,70 or even 80 ££ for fat lambs. If I were you I would stand at the market and watch them being sold, also any less than 60 and I would say forget it. We have sold some of our lambs, butchered, ourselves we sold them for £60 half lamb each, so that was good.
I hope this helps
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I have a blue texel tup and I get one coloured lamb a year, and that's out of a half blue texel ewe. Just throws white lambs on all my other x bred ewes so wouldn't count on them all being coloured lambs.....
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Hi Sbom,
Can I ask a load of questions?
What are the lambs like conformation-wise? What are you using him on - did they lamb easily enough?
Do you mind me asking where he came from and what I'll have to pay, for a 'non-show quality' tup lamb?
As for the colours, my understanding is that white is dominant, so using a blue Texel on white sheep, would get mainly white lambs. I'd be using him on coloured sheep - he will have two blue recessive genes, so I think I should get coloured lambs. I shall have to try it (if I can find a decent one I can afford!)
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jaykay, if it's helpful, our tup lamb Cap'n, half Shetland, 1/4 Charollais, 1/8 Beltex, was graded 'R2' at 9 months old. We had to feed him up a bit for a few weeks after working him.
For those who don't know, the grading has two elements. The letters are conformation, the numbers are fatness. Broadly, conformation is breeding and fatness is feeding.
Conformation letters run EUROP; E is best, R is middle-of-the-road, perfectly acceptable, O is poor and P is p* poor !
Fatness is the same as Condition Score. It runs 1 to 5, where 2 or 3 is desirable, 1 is too thin and 4 and 5 are too fat. Some systems also subdivide 2, 3, and/or 4 into L and H - L is the light end and H the heavy end.
Most large buyers pay 'bid price' on R2, R3L. Bonuses on E2, E3, U2, U3. Deductions (from bid price) on anything '1', '4' or '5', or 'O' or 'P'.
Buyers in the ring at the mart know these gradings and pricings off the top of their heads, and can read a carcase at 50 paces. (Although Eblex will tell you you can't know unless you handle ;) )
In our experience, no animal will get an 'E' unless it's bred from double-muscled stock and, on our ground, has had some cake. It doesn't have to be a lot of cake, but it's high and poor up here, and most of them need more than just grass to build that much muscle in one season.
We are now getting some 'U's from animals that have had little or no cake.
We can get some 'U's from Texel x Mules, but they need caked. For the most part, Mule offspring will be R2 and R3L, and we can do that on grass. We also achieved this on the moorland farm, although only with the larger, earlier lambs; the later lambs, and twins and trips, we sold in the store, or kept over winter.
You do of course have to be circumspect with the caking or they start to slab on the fat, and you get penalised for that.
Most large buyers want a minimum of 15kgs deadweight; maximum 21kgs. Below 15kgs you get penalised, above 21kgs you simply don't get paid for the weight above the cutoff. (Some companies want 16kg min, some will pay up to 22kgs.)
A lamb which is E or U will probably kill out at over 50%. So for 21kgs deadweight, you can buy a lamb weighing up to just short of 40kgs in the ring. This is why the market is always best for lambs weighing 37-38kgs - they will definitely be over the 15 or 16kg minimum, and, if good conformation, should kill out near to 21kgs.
A lamb which is O will kill out at maybe 40%. So to be sure you don't go under 15kgs deadweight, the lamb must weigh at least 37.5kgs on its feet, or the price must reflect that you may get significantly less for it from the abattoir.
To put that in pricing terms; a lamb which is E2, 21kgs deadweight, when deadweight prices are around £4/kg, will deliver 21 * £4 plus 21 * 0.15 bonus = £87.15 gross. A lamb which is O2, 33kgs on its feet, will probably deliver 13.2kgs deadweight. It won't be sent on a £4 bid price, as it will be under spec, but if it were it would deliver at best 13.2 * £4 minus 13.2 * .3 penalty for conformation minus 13.2 * .3 penalty for underweight = £44.80 gross. Fixed costs per lamb (paid by the consignor) include transport, meat levies and killing costs, and usually total £2.50 to £3 per lamb. So the good Texel weighing 38kgs in the ring probably nets £84; the adequate primitive, 33kgs in the ring, £42.
If you have enough lambs to need the fingers of two hands to count them, it may be worth asking the fieldsperson of your local mart (or other, larger, nearby mart ;)) if they would be interested in assessing them on farm. These folks know all the buyers and their requirements, not just the ones who come to the ringside. On the moorland farm, we found that some of our Swale wethers made R2 or R3L but most didn't have the musculature at the backend, or width, to make R and graded O2 for the most part. We found that there are markets wanting exactly that, mostly in the early months of the year, and down to 14kgs deadweight too. So we would sell direct, through the mart but not the ring. We'd drop the lambs off at the mart, or the haulier's, and they'd go off in a bigger batch. When our decent Texel x fat lambs were fetching £65 ish (a few years back, this is), the Swaley wethers would fetch £40ish sold this way.
If you are breeding coloured lambs, you may do better selling that way than putting them through the ring. If they look pretty, most of the ringside buyers will probably assume they are poor conformation! And at the mart, the buyers are looking to fill the major contracts, not expecting to pick up small batches for those out-of-the-ordinary requirements. (Especially at the very small country marts ;) ) Whereas the field staff of a larger mart know what lambs are where, and can pull together a lorryload from a number of places when such a requirement comes in ;)
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The Shetlands I took to the abbatoir earlier in the year graded R3L, which I was pleased with - and I've had said they're were a 3, from handling them, so that was reassuring. That involved cake as well as grass and hay.
It's the time it takes to get them there that's part of the problem. Plus the fact that the local buyers paid four times as much for a U3 at 36kg than an R3L at 36kg.
I'll speak to the mart staff and see what they think. I wonder if it's also worth speaking to the 'big buyer' who did buy some of mine. He paid a better price for my shearlings in March. They were bigger (also R3L, I'm guessing 50kg) and it was only just as the very first spring lambs were coming in. He might tell me what he's looking for I suppose.
The problem with just keeping commercial breeds is the same as the Roughs - I can't manage them.
Then again I could just give up I suppose.
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The Shetlands I took to the abbatoir earlier in the year graded R3L, which I was pleased with - and I've had said they're were a 3, from handling them, so that was reassuring. That involved cake as well as grass and hay.
Gosh, that's really encouraging :)
You're definitely going to be better selling direct then. Either through the mart or through a buyer - but not through the ring.
Our buyer, who runs the collection centre where we take ours, wants batches of 20 really, because it makes the handling and paperwork much simpler, but when he's short he'll take batches of 7-10. (Commercials, you'd probably get more Shetlands in the same pen sizes.)
There will be other buyers, and you've a few larger marts within striking distance who could collate larger batches from a number of smaller farms. I wish I'd known at the weekend - we were at a Barbie with one of the auctioneers from Penrith; I could've sounded him out. I'll be seeing him again in a couple of months, I'll try to remember to discuss it with him.
Or, Kendal are doing some Rare Breed sales now, and working with the RBST. I wonder if they could be persuaded to put together batches of these sorts of sheep... :thinking: I might have a chat to Ruth about that...
The problem with just keeping commercial breeds is the same as the Roughs - I can't manage them.
I feel your pain! (Quite literally. ::))
I was thinking about your predicament as I did my rounds yesterday, and wondering about suggesting Swales. Good local breed, actually nice to spin I have recently discovered, and the undercoat is pretty soft too, and very much more manageable than chunky commercials or the bigger hill breeds.
If you had a Leicester tup - great soppy things; big and heavy yes, but very very tameable, and not horned - then you'd have mule ewe lambs to sell and mule wethers to fatten or would sell readily in the store.
But if you can do R3L with your Shetlands, at > 36kgs, then it's about marketing, not about the product :) And I know you would rather support a minority breed.
Then again I could just give up I suppose.
:hug: I hope it won't come to that!
The other thing I have pondered, for my own fleece sheep too, is whether we really need to breed them every year. If we breed for nice fleeces, then we should be able to sell the fleeces, and given that we have the land in the first place, the annual costs of keeping a sheep that isn't going to lamb are pretty low... I haven't worked out how low, mind. I guess that would make them pretty much pets, but pets that cover their variable costs - and if having them about the place makes us happy, who's to say we shouldn't do it?
But like you, I'd rather find a way of making these native, primitive and rare breeds of sheep work in at least a semi- commercial context, because if we can't then they are doomed, really, aren't they.
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Jaykay
My blue texel cross lambs are up on their feet and sucking really quick, quicker than Charolais x that I used to have and loads quicker than Suffolk (although that's not hard!)
They also lamb easily and although I don't breed them in there first year ( my choice for any breed ) even the first timers lamb with ease.
I have only bred him to white sheep except for the one 1/2 bt ewe I have and both her lambings have produced one blue ewe lamb and one white tup lamb!
They're not the biggest of sheep but have good confirmation and lambs grow well on grass alone.
He actually came from someone as payment for a debt but think it was around £150 owed. The guy bred pedigree texel and beltex but now only has beltex.
Shame you weren't closer as you could have borrowed him to try. We were supposed to be selling him as I need a zwartble tup this year but he's such a character that he's going to be staying. He currently lives with the cows by choice as he seems to think he is a small cow with a fetish for female sheep!
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Good info, thanks Sbom. Ok £150 is do-able and it's good to hear that you like him around so much you're hanging onto him :) Lol on him thinking he's a cow :D and thanks for the offer if I was closer.
I was thinking I'd keep a Shetland tup to use on my shearlings, and the blue Texel for the older ewes.
The only place I can find selling any blue Texel tups is a sale at the end of August in Carlisle, but that's 'top of the range' and they're only bringing 20 tups - too exclusive for me.
Sally, it's not so much supporting a minority breed, as to be honest, Shetlands barely are any more, it's just finding some sheep I can manage on my own, without a dog or decent pens. The Shetlands are good in that respect, as long as I can breed lambs I can sell to help cover costs. I wouldn't manage lambing time without lambs of my own.
Pinning my hopes on a crossing tup, hopefully a blue Texel.
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A BT should be fine on shearlings, don't over feed! You wont need two tups and wont have such a mix of lamb types to sell.
Everyone gets tucked up at the mart on occasion. I heard one dealer say to another in front of a pen of mine "we can't do that, the boys just stood behind us!" hhmmm read into that what you will
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You'll go to the sale at Carlisle though? Sometimes there's one or two that fetch a lot less - and since you would opt for a smaller one by preference, you just might get lucky. I couldn't see a catalogue yet - will they sell aged tups? Sometimes you can get real bargains that way.
And you could also discuss with the breeders if any of them have a tup lamb that is a good sheep but for some reason not such a good Texel, which therefore could be a perfectly usable crossing tup. (Not that that would help you this year, but could maybe source one for next year.)
Or... what about a Texel or Beltex x Shetland tup? We know there are people using Shetland tups on their Beltex and Texel hoggs... so there must be some crossbred tup lambs getting born...
You'll figure something out :hug:
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I sold 150 for 60 pound in the Christmas mart I've NaW got rid of the lot Chickins as well there is no money in ether .I lambd for a farm in Stanford good pay I naw just do work for others and it works. Fed up loosing money on stock .
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I'd contact people who are selling at the sale as they will more than likely have loads at home that just aren't good enough to sell at a big sale but more than good enough for x breeding :thumbsup:
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You could try a Down breed for a good carcase, easy birth and good fleece. Our Badger Face x Southdown come out white, maybe with a little marbling on the nose, but a much better conformation generally and back end in particular than their mamas. Mostly butcher them for ourselves or sell the surplus ram lambs as stores at market (don't mention the breeds involved) and they go for the same as commercial crosses.
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I've had a foray into the pedigree market but it wasn't for me, much as I love the Gotland and Zwartbles it was too difficult for me to sell at a good price as you have to be a well known breeder for that, and the lambs don't have the bulk that the markets like so I have gone back to concentrating on commercial crosses. I have Charollais ewes as well as crosses, and I use a Ryeland tup who has produced lovely meaty market lambs, the only criticism is that they have huge thick fleeces! I will also be looking to get a Texel tup this year so I can mix between the two rams. I tried a Zwartbles ram on my ewes, the lambs were lovely but didn't make the weight and were sold as stores.
I've had some interesting crosses such as Zwartbles x Gotland; Gotland x Herdwick; Zwartbles x Charollais and I managed to sell all the non commercial lambs on Preloved but the purebreds were sold for much less than I paid initially for the ewes.
It's only a hobby for me and I won't make a fortune, but it has been interesting journey, I am building up my own home bred commercials and will keep a group of around 20 ewes.
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What about a cheviot? A friend off mine has 8 cheviot x Shetland ewes and there amazing mums better than any off her others she says....she puts her with a Dutch texel tup gets good lambs from them.....another what about a zwarble? I have 2 Shetland ewes who will be going with my zwarble tup this yeah :)
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You must remember that the mart won't £18 in everey 100 pound so you need a good price for the stock.
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My dad used to cross british milksheep with Lleyn and it worked very well.
Hope this helps
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I've emailed one set of people who are going to the sale - no reply yet, will do the others this evening.
I've added that if it works well, I will be telling everyone at the Shetland Society and on here........
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I've added that if it works well, I will be telling everyone at the Shetland Society and on here........
:thumbsup: