The Shetlands I took to the abbatoir earlier in the year graded R3L, which I was pleased with - and I've had said they're were a 3, from handling them, so that was reassuring. That involved cake as well as grass and hay.
Gosh, that's really encouraging
You're definitely going to be better selling direct then. Either through the mart or through a buyer - but not through the ring.
Our buyer, who runs the collection centre where we take ours, wants batches of 20 really, because it makes the handling and paperwork much simpler, but when he's short he'll take batches of 7-10. (Commercials, you'd probably get more Shetlands in the same pen sizes.)
There will be other buyers, and you've a few larger marts within striking distance who could collate larger batches from a number of smaller farms. I wish I'd known at the weekend - we were at a Barbie with one of the auctioneers from Penrith; I could've sounded him out. I'll be seeing him again in a couple of months, I'll try to remember to discuss it with him.
Or, Kendal are doing some Rare Breed sales now, and working with the RBST. I wonder if they could be persuaded to put together batches of these sorts of sheep...
I might have a chat to Ruth about that...
The problem with just keeping commercial breeds is the same as the Roughs - I can't manage them.
I feel your pain! (Quite literally.
)
I was thinking about your predicament as I did my rounds yesterday, and wondering about suggesting Swales. Good local breed, actually nice to spin I have recently discovered, and the undercoat is pretty soft too, and very much more manageable than chunky commercials or the bigger hill breeds.
If you had a Leicester tup - great soppy things; big and heavy yes, but very very tameable, and not horned - then you'd have mule ewe lambs to sell and mule wethers to fatten or would sell readily in the store.
But if you can do R3L with your Shetlands, at > 36kgs, then it's about marketing, not about the product
And I know you would rather support a minority breed.
Then again I could just give up I suppose.
I hope it won't come to that!
The other thing I have pondered, for my own fleece sheep too, is whether we really need to breed them every year. If we breed for nice fleeces, then we should be able to sell the fleeces, and given that we have the land in the first place, the annual costs of keeping a sheep that isn't going to lamb are pretty low... I haven't worked out
how low, mind. I guess that would make them pretty much pets, but pets that cover their variable costs - and if having them about the place makes us happy, who's to say we shouldn't do it?
But like you, I'd rather find a way of making these native, primitive and rare breeds of sheep work in at least a semi- commercial context, because if we can't then they are doomed, really, aren't they.
Topic: Rather discouraged - prices at mart (Read 13453 times)
