The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Bumblebear on October 16, 2012, 10:38:59 pm
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Our two lambs went off this morning and when I phoned the abbatoir/butcher he said he would keep one leg whole;joint the others; mince the breast and then chops etc and that was a fairly typical cutting list. This is our first time, does that sound about right or should I have been more specific? From what I understand there isn't a huge amount of meat that comes back from a lamb anyway. These were Llyens.
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We had our first lambs this year and used this as the cut list and it seemed to work for us and our members. They were Texel x Llyens and the final weight of meat was 35-45lb
2 leg joints,
2 fillet joints,
approx 10 chops
4-6 slices of neck,
2 shanks,
2 breasts boned and rolled
liver and heart
Hopefully someone more experienced will be along shortly to set us both straight ;)
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We had leg in half, shoulder in half, chops (10-12) per half lamb, belly/breast, neck. Lambs ranged from 10.5kg to 13.4kg per half deadweight.
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we ask for:
leg joints (either whole or halfed depending on family size)
shoulder as above
chops
breast either minced or rolled
neck for stews
ofal including lungs (we dry these in the rayburn for the dogs)
bones (for stock or dogs)
this list most butchers will call traditional cuts.
if you look on howards website i think they have cutting list for each species they kill
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It does sound fairlyn typical. One thing I have found is that I usually need more mince than I get, and I find breast a bit uninspiring, so I usually have all of it minced.
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lamb breast stuffed with a choritzo stuffing cooked slow is to die for ......thats from a non lamb eater i would not give tuppence for lamb normally but this :yum:
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If you look at my recent post about the Castlemilk's meat (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/index.php?topic=28411.0) - you should get about the same amount off your two commercial-type lambs as I got from the 4 Castlemilk wethers.
I can't get the liver, firstly you have to collect the offal immediately, whereas the remainder of the carcase wants to hang for a while before being cut up and secondly because we are a flukey area so almost all of our livers get condemned.
The breast is the sweetest meat on the whole animal. If you hate slow-cooked meat, yes have it minced :yum: However, if you do like slow-cooked meat, roll it, then cook it as a pot roast, or slice it and cook it similarly (in the oven, slowly. placed on top of veg and some stock/wine.) Pop a bit of dried apricot in amongst the veg. :yum:
BH was, until I came along, not a fan of this kind of meat. But he loves pork belly and lamb breast cooked this way. :hungry:
Because I love the breast so much, and also love afelia, I have the breast rolled, then on a commercial-sized lamb, half of one shoulder as chopped meat, the other half rolled. I love shanks slow-roast, too, so have the shanks seperate and the remainder as a leg roast. If you don't use big roasts, you can make the leg into two joints or one joint and some leg steaks.
BH isn't keen on fiddling with chop bones, so one thing I will try sometime is a crown roast - anyone done this? Or rack of lamb?
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We have found that our mutton is best for slow cooking, so now we have: legs left on the bone for roasting, shanks separately, shoulders - half of them boned/rolled, half cubed for stews and curries, and the rest of the meat minced - my children could live on shepherd's pie EVERY day of the week ;D .
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What would people have as a cutting list for a Shetland lamb, ie small.
Or should I not send them as lambs and keep them til hoggs?
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Keep them till next autumn if you have the space. They don't need too much food over winter, and will grow a lot when the grass starts growing again in the spring.
What I have given above is our cutting list for Shetlands, youngest we will send them is 18 months, but have done 3 year old tup too - outside the "smelly" season though.
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As for the breast while I agree with Sally that it is delicious the alternative is to slow roast it until crispy on the outside and most of the fat has gone.
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:wave: Hi how much and what cuts do people suggest for portlands and portlandx's also age as will be a first timer next year. ;D
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Well just collected mine and whilst I was a bit miffed they didnt save the bones (poor communication but hey ho), we got back two boxes one marked 15.5kg and one 17kg. Is this about right/too light? Should we have waited a winter?
Guess what we're having for dinner tonight :D :excited: :excited: :excited: :excited: :excited:
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Well just collected mine and whilst I was a bit miffed they didnt save the bones (poor communication but hey ho), we got back two boxes one marked 15.5kg and one 17kg. Is this about right/too light? Should we have waited a winter?
Guess what we're having for dinner tonight :D :excited: :excited: :excited: :excited: :excited:
well i'm hoping its yummy delicious lamb, but what type, let us know please i'm dribbling thinking about it!!!
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Well just collected mine and ... we got back two boxes one marked 15.5kg and one 17kg. Is this about right/too light? Should we have waited a winter?
My Castlemilks wethers weighed around 34kgs (ave) on the hoof, just under 14kgs deadweight (before cutting.) I would expect to lose maybe 10% of the deadweight in cutting (bones, etc.) Lleyns should give a much better killout %age than primitives, I would think - we expect nearer to 50% of our commercial lambs.
Our commercial lambs that we send off for the supermarkets are typically 38-44kgs liveweight, 19-20.5kgs deadweight, which would return about 17-18.5kgs from the butcher, I guess.
So yours were probably about the size the supermarkets like. If you are happy with the equation, carry on! But as they are your own lambs there is no reason you wouldn't grow them on larger if you like and if you want larger chops, joints, etc.
Enjoy them - I am sure you will!
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Thanks SITN, I was worried about how long to keep them for and how to feed them over the winter. Would we just feed them hay/nuts? We will try again with another couple next year (but we'll have 2 pigs and 2 lambs to get through so that may last us quite a while yet!). I would quite like to try something rarer and smaller now but easy to keep.
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Overwinter commercial-type store lambs on hay and 1/2lb 16% feed (suitable for males if there are any wethers in the group) per head per day, yes. Provide shelter from the worst of the weather, of course. Watch feet if they spend a lot of time on the same ground - try to keep the ground clean, move things around, use lime, etc.
But if they're as good as ready for slaughter in Oct/Nov then you made the right choice :thumbsup:
Primitives will typically need two summers to be ready for slaughter, so if you got some next summer you'd keep them around 12 months. They would also winter better and grow away more strongly come the spring if they get a little cake and some hay. I give mine 1lb cake between 3, plus a bit of hay.
I feed hay at a rate of 1 small bale between 60 primitives or 40 commercials per day. If they're clearing up every wisp, I up it a bit. If they are leaving some, I decrease it a bit. Hay is best fed in two feeds, if you can.
If we get another freeze/snow, they'll eat - and need - quite a bit more, up to twice the above, while the ground is frozen and/or covered.
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Hmmm, adds up the cost of cake and hay overwinter for tup lambs too small to send to the butchers now, and decides Shetlands are going to be expensive things to keep :-\
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Hmmm, adds up the cost of cake and hay overwinter for tup lambs too small to send to the butchers now, and decides Shetlands are going to be expensive things to keep :-\
Here's how I do the sum.
If hay is fed for 3 months, that's 90 days, so 1.5 bales per lamb, if feeding at my 'primitives rate' of 1/60th bale per head per day. A bale is £4 this year?
Cake at 1/3lb per day per head from Nov thru March (150 days) is 50lbs or one sack. £7-ish? Or a bit cheaper if you've a local farmer buying in bulk delivered who'll bag you up some.
So maybe £13 per lamb to overwinter, plus any extra required for the really bad weather, and any straw for bedding if bad enough to house them, and meds for fluking, vaccinating and so on.
Absolutely no question, 1lb of primitive hogget costs quite a bit more to produce than 1lb of commercial lamb slaughtered in its first year.
I'm smelling the leg of Castemilk Moorit wether roasting in the oven as I write :hungry: - and am not unhappy that it's cost me twice as much to produce as a commercial lamb would have done.
Ironically, we started with the rare breeds because BH said I couldn't have any of our own white lambs for the freezer as they were worth too much to sell! :roflanim: :roflanim:
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Hard to separate it all out but I think my sums would be:
Feeding hay for 6 months, 2 bales a week for the 8 tup lambs, so 52 bales at £3.50 each = £182.
Cake at roughly £8 per bag, again, feeding for 8 months, a bag would last just the tup lambs two weeks I think, so 35 bags at £8 = £280.
So each lamb has cost £58 to get him to butchers weight. Each lamb costs £25 to butcher. £83 before any medicines etc.. Say £90
If they grow well I will get maybe 12 kgs meat, for which I can charge £10 per kilo = £120.
Ok, so I'm not making a huge profit but they're not actually costing me money, which is what it felt like.
That was worth doing then :thumbsup:
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I think I can save you £140, or nearly £18 per sheep - if a bag lasts your 8 two weeks, then surely that's 17.3 bags for 8 months? ???
I know it's your first winter with store Shetlands so you're wise to err on the side of caution. I think and hope, though, that your costs should be quite a bit less than £70/head.
But so long as you can recoup, as you say, that's good going. :thumbsup:
Oh, and the Castlemilk legs were tremendous. :yum: :thumbsup:
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Oh yes, I did a bag a week.
Well, I suppose it gives me that reserve.
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Wow... i didn't realise that they needed so much feed over winter.
Hay given adlib given the ground conditions, especially if we have a snowy winter, but i (naively) thought that they wouldn't need cake for so long? (just for the worst of winter months, 2-3 months)
Don't mind the cost as want to keep the girls in best of health
Very interesting :thinking: looking forward to my first sheepy winter ;)
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jaykay's spot is pretty wild and exposed, and she's erring on the side of caution.
When we moved up to the moorland farm we were told to cake the lambs, just 1/2lb /head /day for commercial type lambs (primitives would need less, I'm feeding mine 1/3lb /head /day), from end Oct through until the spring grass was growing properly. 5 months tops.
Primitives would manage on less but would take longer to reach full size.
We could do with some views from people with years and years of experience of overwintering primitives - maybe we should start a new topic...?
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Well just collected mine and whilst I was a bit miffed they didnt save the bones (poor communication but hey ho), we got back two boxes one marked 15.5kg and one 17kg. Is this about right/too light? Should we have waited a winter?
Guess what we're having for dinner tonight :D :excited: :excited: :excited: :excited: :excited:
Ours were slightly heavier, between 20kg and 26.5kg but not fatty at all. We were very pleased with them but glad we killed them when we did and didn't wait any longer. The slaughterman said they killed out very heavy, we couldn't believe it when one ewe lamb was 26kg deadweight! All of the joints and chops were very large, v yummy :D :D