The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Remy on March 27, 2013, 08:09:39 pm
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Do any of you have experience of selling black sheep at market? I have a few this year that have come from my Zwartbles ram, they look to be good strong lambs at the mo. Is there a prejudice against coloured lambs, ie do they generally make less money? I suppose I'll find out eventually, but wondered if any of you have sold them.
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Hi Remy, we sold a ram a few years back that was used a lot in a commercial flock as well as with a few pedigree ladies. The lady that purchased him, breeds the crossbreds to a texel tup and then gets 50% black and 50% white market lambs, she told me that when she took them to Shrewsbury market it would be better to split the white and the black lambs even though they were essentially the same other than the colour. She was really pleased that she got an extra £10 per head for the black lambs! I am not sure how that worked but sounds like there isn't too much colour prejudice at Shrewsbury market - or maybe there is in favour of black! The purebred Zwartbles don't tend to do so well at market as they don't have the confirmation given by a terminal sire, although having said that if they are done well and sold off the ewe they can do very well.
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It will be Shrewsbury they'll be going to, so I might be lucky! Tas the ram has so far produced two sets of triplets (crossbreeds) and two sets of twins (purebred) with six boys in total who will go to market. It will be interesting to see how the crosses grow compared with the purebreds.