[DenisCooper]

Evening,

Im planning on taking some lambs in in the next few weeks. The butchers kill, cut and pack for £35, I was planning on trying to sell some half lamb boxes but not sure what sort of price people tend to pay for them?

does anyone do this? what is the average sort of price to pay?

thanks
Denis

[Backinwellies]

 Will depend a bit on breed and size  but about £65 a half lamb unless something very special.

[DenisCooper]

Thanks. That was the kind of price I was thinking.

[Bramham Wiltshire Horns]

Don’t sell yourself short
I sold mine local fir the 1st time this year, all grass fed given feed 4 weeks before lambing
I built a story and a product behind mine
I have a local FB page

I sold mine for £80 half box I sold 10 half boxes and could have sold that 5 times over and this year I have orders before they are born

The boxes where min 11kg

[Backinwellies]

B W H …… not selling myself short ...............at £80 for 11 kg you are getting less than I get at £65 for 7kg. 

[twizzel]

weight is not everything- a £80/15kg half lamb sounds better value but could be far too fat.

[Backinwellies]

weight is not everything- a £80/15kg half lamb sounds better value but could be far too fat.

Yes much better value for customer at under £6 /kg

but surely we are talking about the producer getting reasonable income from meat production , and customer paying for premium product.

how can £6-7/kg  be better for producer  than £9 /kg  ?   

[twizzel]

I meant more that weight isn’t the be all and end all- look at the quality of the lamb first. There is no point producing a “good value” half lamb box weighing a minimum of X kilo, if the lamb is too fat, especially if selling by the kilo- the customer is paying for fat.


I’m probably not explaining myself very well... lambing and lack of sleep has muddled my brain 

[Bramham Wiltshire Horns]

B W H …… not selling myself short ...............at £80 for 11 kg you are getting less than I get at £65 for 7kg.

I wasn’t aiming the answer at you

Just replying to the question in general,
 

[cambee]

We sold our first 11kg half lamb boxes at £65 last year from Coloured Ryelands. The meat was fatty though so lessons learned there in terms of feeding etc. We are really small scale and had sold some live lambs so we only had 6 half lamb boxes to sell but tbh we struggled to find buyers so I think our marketing was off. I’m interested in your post Bramhall as to how you created a story etc and that you could have sold more than you did. To some extent we do that as we have a holiday let and my daughter does a lot on the holiday let Facebook page about the animals but when she advertised the meat boxes she immediately got 2 really nasty vegan type comments so we took that post down. We hope to sell more meat this year but we will need to get the marketing right. Something to think about DenisCooper.

[Maysie]

Question for the people who are selling these boxes:
Who is the main target market? 

Friends and family?
Near neighbours?
Random buyers on Facebook? 

Or a combination of all of these? 

Just interested as we intend to do the same thing with pork soon and interested to hear who the main target market is. 

[Dans]

Our first year we had 3 ewe to cull (2 didn't get in lamb and 1 was an awful mum). I was quite worried no-one would want the meat. I advertised on my personal FB and got 7 definite wants in a couple hours. I had to quickly say we were sold out and apologise to two people as we wanted at least a half for ourselves. I didn't expect that much interest for mutton at £9/kg.

Once those lambs were grown we had 2 rams to do as hogget. Again at £9/kg but we didn't even advertise on our Facebook, we had pre-orders from when they were young. Sold 3 halves and kept one for ourselves.

We've got 6 ewes in lamb this year and I'm confident we could sell the meat from all, but they need to go as hogget so we may well be selling ewes with lambs at foot as our grazing isn't doing so well.

Our sheep are a slow grown, grass/hay fed (apart from just before lambing and the odd digestive treat/coarse mix to pen them), rare breed. I don't know if that has helped with getting orders. We do have a website, Facebook page, Instagram and blog which could be used to advertise the meat if we don't get enough from friends, family and word of mouth.

Dans

Dans

[Bramham Wiltshire Horns]

We sold our first 11kg half lamb boxes at £65 last year from Coloured Ryelands. The meat was fatty though so lessons learned there in terms of feeding etc. We are really small scale and had sold some live lambs so we only had 6 half lamb boxes to sell but tbh we struggled to find buyers so I think our marketing was off. I’m interested in your post Bramhall as to how you created a story etc and that you could have sold more than you did. To some extent we do that as we have a holiday let and my daughter does a lot on the holiday let Facebook page about the animals but when she advertised the meat boxes she immediately got 2 really nasty vegan type comments so we took that post down. We hope to sell more meat this year but we will need to get the marketing right. Something to think about DenisCooper.

We aim ours at friends and family
Work colllegues etc but
A lot of people from the local village/daughters new school friends and just general pub chat all these people became interested

We created a FB page as our daughter (5) wanted to keep her friends in the loop but even people passing by now follow us so seems to have created a buzz around our village
There are a lot of bigger sheep people around us but I wanted people to think they are part of what we are doing
The local school are doing a day out once the lambs are born

If you type Bramham Wiltshire Horn In face book you should find me

We only have small flock as just started out and in no way experts

We used to have a few Ryelands as a beginner flock but found they was too fatty and seemed to get flu strike pretty quick

The Wiltshire horn which I alway liked seem to be a lot leaner and seem to stay in great condition without any extra feed apart from lambing (they self shed wool so don’t need shearing, real milky and great mothers and are all round are great sheep 

https://www.facebook.com/BramhamWiltshireHorns