Lambs away too!
Posted: Wednesday 6 November, 2013
We had a good lambing in 2013 – we didn’t see the vet at all and all 15 lambs that appeared on the scans made it safely into the world. We had seven ewe lambs and eight tups, born between 30th March and 11th April.
The eight tup lambs (we don’t castrate) went off to slaughter on 16th October, so roughly six months old. As usual, the butcher said they were fat. All our animals are fat – but it was a particularly good summer and grass was plentiful. The alternative is to send them off earlier, but six months is the shortest period I’m comfortable with.
Unfortunately, we don’t have live or dead weights. :-(
We sold four lambs to a local artisan pie company and sold another five halves locally, so that left three halves for our freezer. Ryeland lamb is now going to feature in a top class Scotch Pie – no grey “mystery meat” there. :-)
On a rough calculation, without lifting all the lamb out the freezer and weighting it, I reckon that we had 100kg of “lamb in the box”, at a value of £11 / kg, so £1,100. The slaughter and butchery cost were £400, including kill, transport to the butcher from the abattoir, cutting, waste disposal and processing some sausages for us. Our transport costs were about £60 (to the abattoir, as the other transport costs have been attributed to the beef). So, did we spend £640 producing eight lambs?
Of course, it’s not really eight lambs, it’s fifteen. If we sold the seven ewe lambs for breeding we’d maybe get £50 a head, so £350 of income. So the question is, did it cost us £990 to produce the lambs? I would say not and I will check back our costs when I get a spare hour or two - I really should keep better records! :-)
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Comments
Rosemary
You should register with your local authority environmental health department. Ours inspected but because the meat is vacuum packed and goes straight to the buyer or in the freezer, they were happy. Raw meat isn't high risk for food poisoning because it's going to be cooked before consumption.
So long as the meat is killed and butchered in an approved premises, you shoudl be fine. The only think they might be concerned about is the transport from butcher to buyer because it should be kept below 5C.
If you are going to sell it from YOUR freezer or fridge, you will have to ensure that your fridge / freezer is at the correct temperature, that it is checked regularly and the temperature recorded.
Comments are now closed for this post.
Julie
Saturday 9 November, 2013 at 9:30pm
Can I just sell my butchered lamb to any one or do I have to go through a register of some sort? They were slaughtered then butchered by our local Abatoir and butcher.