Author Topic: Price to charge for hebredian lambs (Read 4967 times)

piggy · « **on:** July 18, 2011, 08:25:12 pm »

Hi all

Help please,
My boy lambs are as big as there mums!so time to advertise them,i have 3 boys and 3 ewes they are not registered,what price should i be charging for them,the boys were ringed when they were 5 days old.
Thanks

Karen

Fleecewife · « **Reply #1 on:** July 19, 2011, 12:20:55 pm »

Hi Piggy

I can't really answer your question - sorry. Are you hoping that the males will be bought for breeding? Or are they going to be fattened for slaughter by someone else? We sell a select few registered males as breeding stock and the rest we keep on until they are 16 months when they go into our freezer or if we have more than enough then we sell some carcases. So I have no real idea what you could charge for your unreg lads at weaning.
Are you keeping the females yourself?

adamhfc · « **Reply #2 on:** July 19, 2011, 02:39:41 pm »

it says boys where ringed take it that means there not entire

lachlanandmarcus · « **Reply #3 on:** July 19, 2011, 05:14:17 pm »

if its any help I would charge about £20-25 for an unreg shetland lamb. It's not much but then the ewes havent cost much and the lambs havent eaten anything other than grass and no issues with lambing etc. The boys we have are also ringed. It would be a bit less - £20 per head - if it was to return a favour or if they bought the whole years worth of lambs (eg our vet is having all 10 of our ewe lambs this year).

Thats not to say thats a proper price, we havent historically sold them, but having quite a few lambs this year surplus thats what we are working on the basis of. NB it's more a ground management thing that we keep them rather than as a business, if it was a business we would have a lot more, probably registered and would charge more.

piggy · « **Reply #4 on:** July 19, 2011, 10:23:00 pm »

Thanks for replys

Yes the boys have had the snip as didnt want any accidents incase i desided to keep them plus thought it would be easiler to sell rather than an entire lamb also being that there are not registered,this is my first year of having lambs hence why i didnt have a clue as what to charge,i have advertised them in the paper for £30 each but i wasnt sure if that was too cheap as the local farmer sells orphan week old lambs for £25 she told me that the price of lamb has shot up?
I have thought about keeping them to then send off but to be honest i did have to feed them alot as we had no rain for months so no grass,luckly about 6 weeks ago we finally had rain and its not stopped since! problem being now they cant keep up they are in a field about 1/2 an acre 4 adult ewes and 6 lambs and have had to chuck the horses in to help them so i really dont want to be in the same postion next year with extra mouths and lambs and no grass.

Fleecewife i would love to keep the lambs especically as they are all so easy to handle i made a point of every morning and night when they had they mix whilst they were eating i would pick each lamb up and then put it down straight away again so they were used to humans and im so glad i did as the ewe lamb with 4 horns managed to rip 1 of the horns off on the fence she got free of the fence so i just put some feed down and picked her up straight away no stress of having to chase her round the field and cleaned it up.(no chance of that with the soays)

Also have another question about if would be ok to cross my soay tup with the 4 heb ewes but will post another thread about that.

Karen

Fleecewife · « **Reply #5 on:** July 20, 2011, 12:01:12 am »

Quote from: adamhfc on July 19, 2011, 02:39:41 pm

it says boys where ringed take it that means there not entire

Oh yes, oops - pay attention fleecewife

Well done Piggy for getting them all so well handled - it does make life easier as you found

Isn't it a shame when the multi-horns rip off their side horns? It doesn't matter how careful you are, someone will do it

The tup lambs are usually ok but ewe lambs and wethers are forever knocking off little bits

lachlanandmarcus · « **Reply #6 on:** July 20, 2011, 12:27:56 am »

commercial lamb prices have shot up but not our skinny trad breeds so much, if it was texel/suffolk lamb it would be 2 or 3 or 4 times the ££.

But then you would have to feed the ewes more, have more birthing issues with vet costs ££ etc etc. If selling now, unregd and castrated trad breed lamb, the buyer has to keep them a fair old while (and poss over winter) before they can go off for meat with a decent amount on them, and even then it might only be 2/3 the size of the commercial lamb that went off 5 months earlier (Not nearly as good tasting but they dont care about that!).

So £30 def not too little I would think.....

princesspiggy · « **Reply #7 on:** July 20, 2011, 02:01:13 pm »

we used to sell our unreg hebridean lambs for £25 and they always sold quick.

Corrie Dhu · « **Reply #8 on:** July 21, 2011, 08:27:54 am »

I sell everything through the market and would expect to get 35+ for good sized fit hebridean lambs. If they are as big as their mothers already I'd be tempted to keep them a bit longer and sell them through the fat ring.