[shetlandpaul]

We pay £100 for whole lamb jointed from a neighbour, it comes in a big poly bag and we have to pack/wrap it ourselves for the freezer. We're due one next week. This is in North Yorkshire by the way, the price of lamb is horrendous in the  butchers,only yesterday i paid £6.38 for two fat chops as a treat!  but they were scrummy and worth it! 
Don't sell yourself short but don't rip 'em off or they won't come back!
HTH
Mandy 

have you tried leeds market and getting mutton. it used to be dead cheap. but that was 5 years ago.

[Fowgill Farm]

Yuk Mutton, can't stand the smell or the taste, neighbour once gave us some and it was awfull never again! so will stick with the lamb thanks.
Mandy 

[tizaala]

About 6 years ago a friend of ours, one man band with 200 sheep, was asked by defra ( wash mouth out with soap) to do a 12 month total costing paying himself the national minimum wage for every hour he worked on the sheep, he had to include all transport costs ,worming , sheering  , drenching , fodder, haylage etc etc, by the time he got them to market he was loosing more than £30 per lamb......

[OhLaLa]

When you hand it over you might need to point out again that they are paying £** per kilo as it may come as a bit of a shock when they see just how 'little' 1/2 a lamb is when it is jointed, often they expect to see a bin bag full of meat, not a carrier bag.

A few years back (when we last bought a whole jointed lamb from a neighbour) it worked out at about £90 (the first time, about 13 years ago it was £45).

 

[freethyme]

Thanks for all the help and advice to you all.

The first three lambs have gone to slaughter today.

We have agreed a price of £100 per lamb, which seems far.

Again thanks for help.

Nigel

[SteveHants]

Grazing rent = 1 x lamb/yr so per lamb this yr is £46/12 = £3.83 (plus the odd bit of fencing, which I have no idea how to factor in)
Ewe slaughter/Packing = £36
Fuel Costs = About a tenner
Retail cost of half box of lamb:£75

Given that I grow fairly big lambs (Wilts horns are quite big) and they are a rare breed with the associated cachet etc, I charge £80/half lamb or £150 for a whole one.

So per lamb profit (average) = £175 - 49.83 = 125.17

Nb - this does not include vets fees or all the bloody feed I had to chuck at them this winter (although most of it was swapped for the services of my ram) - so I reckon its more like £100, I know Wilts horns tend not to do well at marts, so I'm happy, if it was a 'commercial' lamb, it'd barley be worth it as yer getting over £80 for em on a good day.

[SallyintNorth]

About 6 years ago a friend of ours, one man band with 200 sheep, was asked by defra ( wash mouth out with soap) to do a 12 month total costing paying himself the national minimum wage for every hour he worked on the sheep, he had to include all transport costs ,worming , sheering  , drenching , fodder, haylage etc etc, by the time he got them to market he was loosing more than £30 per lamb......

Of course all farmers should sell up, get jobs in the rat race, where they may just be able to earn enough money to pay for:

• holidays in the countryside
• a gym subscription to stay fit
• evening classes to stimulate themselves
• some ground and four-legged creatures - oh, and to pay someone to look after them when they're on those holidays...
• camps and adventures for the kids
• probiotics, detoxes, facials and all the other treatments needed to assuage the effects of modern living on the body
• a therapist to help them think they can find a reason to get up in the morning
• etc etc etc

Check my tag line. 

[hexhammeasure]

the last few years we have been selling our sheep as hoggets boned and rolled charging 2.70 per lb weighed on the bone... that is weighed then deboned. we tried this with lambs and people complained at how little meat there was.

we have a fixed maximum of £130 per whole hogg and we often hit the max with our suffolk and suffolk X

[violet]

When I worked out what it cost me rear my lambs and get them freezer ready and balanced it against what I charged - £120.
 - including everything - I broke even I think I may even have made a very small profit.
Which is great 'cos that even included the fuel to the abbatoir ( 80-100 miles away) and all the running around collecting & delivering 

[egglady]

how can i work out what a live lamb weighs? (shetland)

[mmu]

I'm getting in a bit late on this one, but I wanted to put a word in for mutton.  It's not an easy thing to buy around here, but definitely coming back into fashion with chefs and for some people it's a taste of their childhood.  I run a lot of my sheep on past two years and very rarely have any trouble selling the meat.  My butcher has a habit when he puts labels on the joints of pricing them up at what he would sell at retail, I just take a bit off, thereby giving an obvious discount. I still make a lot more than selling on the hoof, but then there's a lot more time, expense and trouble involved.

[chickenfeed]

to price our lambs each year we take the price we could get from our local livestock auction then add on the cost of slaughter last years worked out £85  - £90 (- auction fees) market price plus £25 k&k so the customers paid £110 works out well for us if no one wants to pay that we take them to market the profit margin is still the same. we have never put any through auction so the prices must be fair.

[violet]

how can i work out what a live lamb weighs? (shetland)

I have scales - but I use them for my pigs & haven't tried them with lambs. Other than that I don't know.  sorry

[SallyintNorth]

Yes, we weigh ours.  After years of practice you get a good feel for it - but even so, the scales can often surprise.

As far as I know there's no rule of thumb like there is with pigs or horses, taking girth and length measurements and doing a calculation.

Are you wanting to weigh them to know if they're ready for market / slaughter, or to calculate the dose rate of medicines?

[Fleecewife]

We set up a weighing machine a few years ago.  It involves a spring balance reading beyond what you expect your sheep to weigh, so for ours it's probably 100kgs (not going out to look  ) - the spring balance is the expensive bit but we already had ours. Hang it somewhere secure, either in a door frame or build an A frame outdoors, construct a sling for the sheep such as a sack tied at each end and passed securely under the belly, then hook it all up.  Obviously you have to make sure the sheep doesn't wriggle but after a few you get a feel for the true weight of all your stock so it's not something you would do for every single one. 
Another way is to weigh yourself, then pick up the sheep, step back on the scales and subtract the difference - not many scales weigh high enough for that to work with a mature animal, even if you could lift it.
You could perhaps also buy a very expensive weighing crate but for a small flock it wouldn't be cost-effective.
I have a photo of our set-up if anyone wants to visualise it.

More usually when judging whether your lambs/hoggets or older sheep are ready for market, you would assess their condition score, as this is more relevant to readiness for slaughter than their actual weight which varies greatly with breed and age.