[countrygirlatheart]

Can anyone advise re the current regs re taking lambs direct to a Scottish abbatoir (first time for me this year)

Do they have to be double tagged ?  (mine are single tagged just now)
Does it matter if they have been fed before they go (i.e. to get them in a pen)
does it matter if their fleece is wet?
do they take them in straight away so as to minimise stress?
do they split the carcass/do the butchering or do you then get a butcher to do this?
any other vital things to know?

have had trouble even typing abbatoir so can't quite bring myself to phone one direct yet!  but will get to it in due course

[sabrina]

In the past our lambs have gone to Elgin to be slaughtered and all they asked was we marked them, could be different now and maybe we will need our own tags. Yet to find this out. They also asked them to be clean and we took ours off the grass the night before and into the trailer with water. We kept the whole thing as stress free as we could and as they were booked in for a time were slaughter almost right away.

[countrygirlatheart]

Hi Sabrina

thanks very much for your reply.  Rightly or wrongly I ended up taking the tup lambs to market and they went away last Monday (my first time)  It all went smoothly and I coped ok - I just don't let myself think about the details now.  I did look into taking them straight to the abbatoir and having them butchered.  The killing cost of £10 plus £30 for butchering and the estimated selling cost of £120 (as estimated by the butcher) meant a return of £80 each lamb and I would have to store and sell the meat myself.  As it turned out I achieved £80 for one lamb and £84 for each of the other two.

Next year I may go the direct route as I would have preferred them to 'go' straight away

[bigskies]

Great Question!!

We are just about to take 3 of our five sheep to the abbatoir and it is daunting.........acceptable trailer.....tagging.......marking etcetcetc

Next year we will all know more!!!!

[countrygirlatheart]

good luck with it bigskies