The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Backinwellies on May 01, 2013, 08:09:23 am
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commercial finnished lamb is normally about 6 -7 months old and weighs 40Kg ish. for less commercial breeds how old do you slaughter and why?
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Hogget.
They get to enjoy some of the new growth grass before going.
Larger than lamb. Good flavour.
:sheep:
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commercial finnished lamb is normally about 6 -7 months old and weighs 40Kg ish.
A lot of it will be a lot younger than that - 14-18 weeks. Many hill-bred lambs will take longer to fatten, and even on good ground not all lambs will finish in that time, but a commercial producer with Texel sheep or similar will be looking to have the majority away before they're 5 months old.
There's a whole next tranche of course, of lambs which take up to 12 months to get to the magic 21kg deadweight - breeds such as Cheviot, for instance. Often they are bred on the hills, and sold at 4 or 5 months old as store lambs, fattened on dairy land when the cattle are housed over winter and sold after Christmas, leaving the grass cleaned and freshened ready for the cattle again.
The 21kg deadweight is a supermarket requirement - they found that if they buy lambs heavier than that, they get a lot of fat and not much more meat. They would, they tell us, be happy to be buying bigger carcases if only they could reliably get lean ones.
Our local butcher likes his lambs quite a bit bigger - up to 26 kgs deadweight. But still lean.
My feeling is that there is an optimum age and size for a given breeding on a given ground. On hill ground, or old-fashioned unimproved grassland, I like to get the fullness of flavour of two summers, which requires a less commercial type than a Texel - ie, hill sheep or primitives.
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For the northern short tailed breeds like Shetland and Hebs they are best sent at about 16 months once they have fattened on some lovely spring grass, as they don't gain any weight over the winter months no matter what you feed them. It also makes the per head slaughter charge more worthwhile.
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I have had lambs go to slaughter at 5 months and a year old. Depends what you like.
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Ours go at absolute minimum of six months or max of ten. All depends on growth but our ideal is to let them have every season before they go. Try to send off at at least 45kg liveweight. Last year was crap due to grass being useless and therfore major feed expenses. Made pretty much nothing and got nowhere near 45kg even at the ten months.