[Brucklay]

I'll just give the facts as written on the sheet (ie not their personal to me names!!!) - I guess things will be different around the country but for anyone wanting to know north of Scotland results here you go:
smaller lambs  - 38kg each - £64.50 each
large lambs - 49kg each - £75.00 each
medium lambs - 41kg each - £66.00 each

[Fleecewife]

I've never sold meat lambs through a mart but those prices seem very good.  I wouldn't get more if I sold them privately beautifully cut and wrapped. Well done - another hurdle crossed 

[andywalt]

But thats not even £2.00  a KG ? 

When I sell direct to friends family ect This year I will charge £120 per lamb average weight 16kg-18KG   so thats more than £6.00 per kg and thats very cheap. abattoir is approx £25 so take that off its still £5.00kg, also we have a farm shop who pushes local pproduce they want some this year and a pub wants 3 .

Have you thought of adverting locally in shop windows or agri merchants or local farm shop? for local lamb for the freezer, people will bite your arm off, and its much better for the animal as I make sure they are taken, loaded calmly to the abattoir.

Remember dont go too cheap, we are lucky to break even after all our winter feed ect

[Anke]

I think these prices are ok. Not so long ago, lambs of that weight would sell for a lot less than 50 quid!

I got 1.76/kg just before Xmas for light lambs. And actually seling through the mart is the easiest option for me -no carting to abattoir, getting the butcher to cut and then doing all the selling myself (which incidentally should be done straight from the butchers, unless you have refrigerated transport yourself). And the mart is 10 minutes down the road, they also do the belly clean for me - I would have to do that myself for the abttoir....


PS.: beef prices were actually the same on the day I sold my lambs (on a per kg basis of course).

[VSS]

You do have to remember though, that when selling at market you are selling live weight, and when dealing with customers direct, you are looking at the weight of a finished, trimmed butchered carcass.

At this time of year a 38 kg lamb may only produce a 17-18 kg carcass and a proportion of that will be low value meat. You also have to factor in the cost of killing and butchering - it all adds up. We have sold direct in the past, although we are not in a good location for this. By the time you add up allthe extra costs associated with selling direct to the customer, we reckoned we were only getting about and extra £5 per lamb. If you added all the extra labour in to it, there was nothing in it at all. In fact we were slightly better off by not selling direct.

Most of out lambs (the ones not kept for sale as breeding stock) are now sold direct to the abbatoir. Their fieldsman comes out and picks through them and then they send a trailer to collect them. Price is OK - and no hassle or outlay on our part.

I'm not saying that you can't add value to lambs by selling direct, only that it is not a silver bullet and you need to weigh up the costs carefully.

I agree though with your premise that we don't get paid enough for our lambs.

[andywalt]

Thats very true...live weight is much differant than the dead weight 50% differance...... my 10 store lambs last year, had one trip to the abattoir I collected 3 days later in the afternoon and had delivered them to clients by 6pm into there freezers.

so live weight at 40kg market price of £1.76 = £70.40  yes....not alot in it


£120 for £20kg dead weight which is what I will charge this year, less -£25.00 abattoir and packing, -£10 fuel max  total £85.00 = £4.25kg

I agree with you there is not alot in it, when I talk to my local farm shop I will ask what he is paying from other sources first !!

I am hoping to have approx 30 to sell this year, I think it will be 4 or 5 years before is start to get any money back !!

[shep53]

Well done BRUCKLAY excellent prices ,did the deductions horrify you

[Brucklay]

To be truthful I found the deductions fine - they;ve got to make a living too - I think the 'clip' was £1 or £1.50 per lamb it would have taken me most of a morning to round up and pluck up courage so I think my time was better spend on my day job!!!