The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Welshlad on August 23, 2016, 08:24:49 pm
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Anyone got any experience of purchasing fatstock lambs at marts and then selling to abbatoir?
Can this be a worthwhile venture?
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its called buying stores!
Your going to loose money by the time you factor in your travel and time costs.
Better off buying store lambs for £40-50 and selling them for £60-70 after xmas, when more fat on them, but that will cost you £10-15 each in feed.
To make money doing that you need to be buying 100-200 stores a time.
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Over the years iv'e seen new men try to buy at auctions but the regular dealers always try to force them out by either outbidding them or bidding them up then dropping out . You will have to be very care full ,any lambs out of spec or rejected for illness or injury will lose you money . Most dealers are buying for a big killing house to a certain spec on commision
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Big risk I would say. For a start abattoirs generally kill for someone else who is paying for their services. They aren't generally buying stock to kill which they then sell on. The dealers are buying huge numbers every week from various auctions. Farmers I know watch the market very carefully and sometimes they sell liveweight and sometimes they sell deadweight. A shep53 said dealers buy to a spec. Travelling and how long an animal waits in the auction can knock it's weight back.
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Our local abattoirs have people at market each week buying fatstock. I don't think you would make much, if anything financially, selling deadweight it is very easy for money to be knocked off because of bruising, overfat, too heavy etc- all things especially the bruising you wouldn't be aware of at a market
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if you like [member=163498]Welshlad[/member] I have a load of ram lambs for sale. Some of them fat and some nearly, I would have to get them in to see though. Would you be interested? I have someone coming to look at them on Sunday, but if not I will let you know. :)