jaykay, if it's helpful, our tup lamb Cap'n, half Shetland, 1/4 Charollais, 1/8 Beltex, was graded 'R2' at 9 months old. We had to feed him up a bit for a few weeks after working him.
For those who don't know, the grading has two elements. The letters are conformation, the numbers are fatness. Broadly, conformation is breeding and fatness is feeding.
Conformation letters run EUROP; E is best, R is middle-of-the-road, perfectly acceptable, O is poor and P is p* poor !
Fatness is the same as Condition Score. It runs 1 to 5, where 2 or 3 is desirable, 1 is too thin and 4 and 5 are too fat. Some systems also subdivide 2, 3, and/or 4 into L and H - L is the light end and H the heavy end.
Most large buyers pay 'bid price' on R2, R3L. Bonuses on E2, E3, U2, U3. Deductions (from bid price) on anything '1', '4' or '5', or 'O' or 'P'.
Buyers in the ring at the mart know these gradings and pricings off the top of their heads, and can read a carcase at 50 paces. (Although Eblex will tell you you can't know unless you handle
)
In our experience, no animal will get an 'E' unless it's bred from double-muscled stock and, on our ground, has had some cake. It doesn't have to be a lot of cake, but it's high and poor up here, and most of them need more than just grass to build that much muscle in one season.
We are now getting some 'U's from animals that have had little or no cake.
We can get some 'U's from Texel x Mules, but they need caked. For the most part, Mule offspring will be R2 and R3L, and we can do that on grass. We also achieved this on the moorland farm, although only with the larger, earlier lambs; the later lambs, and twins and trips, we sold in the store, or kept over winter.
You do of course have to be circumspect with the caking or they start to slab on the fat, and you get penalised for that.
Most large buyers want a minimum of 15kgs deadweight; maximum 21kgs. Below 15kgs you get penalised, above 21kgs you simply don't get paid for the weight above the cutoff. (Some companies want 16kg min, some will pay up to 22kgs.)
A lamb which is E or U will probably kill out at over 50%. So for 21kgs deadweight, you can buy a lamb weighing up to just short of 40kgs in the ring. This is why the market is always best for lambs weighing 37-38kgs - they will definitely be over the 15 or 16kg minimum, and, if good conformation, should kill out near to 21kgs.
A lamb which is O will kill out at maybe 40%. So to be sure you don't go under 15kgs deadweight, the lamb must weigh at least 37.5kgs on its feet, or the price must reflect that you may get significantly less for it from the abattoir.
To put that in pricing terms; a lamb which is E2, 21kgs deadweight, when deadweight prices are around £4/kg, will deliver 21 * £4 plus 21 * 0.15 bonus = £87.15 gross. A lamb which is O2, 33kgs on its feet, will probably deliver 13.2kgs deadweight. It won't be sent on a £4 bid price, as it will be under spec, but if it were it would deliver
at best 13.2 * £4
minus 13.2 * .3 penalty for conformation
minus 13.2 * .3 penalty for underweight = £44.80 gross. Fixed costs per lamb (paid by the consignor) include transport, meat levies and killing costs, and usually total £2.50 to £3 per lamb. So the good Texel weighing 38kgs in the ring probably nets £84; the adequate primitive, 33kgs in the ring, £42.
If you have enough lambs to need the fingers of two hands to count them, it may be worth asking the fieldsperson of your local mart (or other, larger, nearby mart
) if they would be interested in assessing them on farm. These folks know
all the buyers and their requirements, not just the ones who come to the ringside. On the moorland farm, we found that some of our Swale wethers made R2 or R3L but most didn't have the musculature at the backend, or width, to make R and graded O2 for the most part. We found that there are markets wanting exactly that, mostly in the early months of the year, and down to 14kgs deadweight too. So we would sell direct, through the mart but not the ring. We'd drop the lambs off at the mart, or the haulier's, and they'd go off in a bigger batch. When our decent Texel x fat lambs were fetching £65 ish (a few years back, this is), the Swaley wethers would fetch £40ish sold this way.
If you are breeding coloured lambs, you may do better selling that way than putting them through the ring. If they look pretty, most of the ringside buyers will probably assume they are poor conformation! And at the mart, the buyers are looking to fill the major contracts, not expecting to pick up small batches for those out-of-the-ordinary requirements. (Especially at the very small country marts
) Whereas the field staff of a larger mart know what lambs are where, and can pull together a lorryload from a number of places when such a requirement comes in
Topic: Rather discouraged - prices at mart (Read 13452 times)
