The Old Ram-Australia
Herd Master
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2011
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The reality is that there are two types of lamb farms. Finished lambs for the slaughter market and the supply of “store lambs” for the feedlot and finishers. Lots of farmers attempt to supply finished lambs for the slaughter market but you often see in livestock report s about the large numbers of secondary types coming through the saleyards which means many of them are failing in their endeavors .The cause could well be the effects of the season, but if your farm continually fails to achieve first grade perhaps your farm is actually not good enough by way of land, water or management.
If you pay attention to the market reports there are excellent opportunities for increasing your profit margins by rearing quality “store lambs”. These are lambs which will perform in either feedlots or on high performance grazing operations. Trying to always turn off first grade lambs can eat up a lot of both your time and profits unless you accept that the land or breeding is not quite up to the job. Time taken in researching this alternative market could be well worth it in the long run, as with demand high and the national flock low by historical records the future for the production of store lambs is really quite good over the longer term.
Feedloters /finishers have definite ideas about what they want in a store lamb so the first step is to find out “what that is” as if you start out wanting to produce what they want, their interest will be aroused as its in their interest to secure long term providers of what is their “raw materials”. They will instruct you as to the age, breed and weight type they are looking for and then it’s up to you to provide it. Perhaps you can even escape the “Circle of Death “type of production and instead move to a totally Grass Fed operation with its low cost and diverse species and low labor inputs actually increase your profit margin? I suspect that a well bred grass animal will outperform most others in a feedlot as it converts the extra feed protein to meat more efficiently than the one which requires a higher protein base in the first place.
But before you dive headlong down this path you must understand that you are on a 5 year journey to perfect all the changes you will have to undertake…...T.O.R.
If you pay attention to the market reports there are excellent opportunities for increasing your profit margins by rearing quality “store lambs”. These are lambs which will perform in either feedlots or on high performance grazing operations. Trying to always turn off first grade lambs can eat up a lot of both your time and profits unless you accept that the land or breeding is not quite up to the job. Time taken in researching this alternative market could be well worth it in the long run, as with demand high and the national flock low by historical records the future for the production of store lambs is really quite good over the longer term.
Feedloters /finishers have definite ideas about what they want in a store lamb so the first step is to find out “what that is” as if you start out wanting to produce what they want, their interest will be aroused as its in their interest to secure long term providers of what is their “raw materials”. They will instruct you as to the age, breed and weight type they are looking for and then it’s up to you to provide it. Perhaps you can even escape the “Circle of Death “type of production and instead move to a totally Grass Fed operation with its low cost and diverse species and low labor inputs actually increase your profit margin? I suspect that a well bred grass animal will outperform most others in a feedlot as it converts the extra feed protein to meat more efficiently than the one which requires a higher protein base in the first place.
But before you dive headlong down this path you must understand that you are on a 5 year journey to perfect all the changes you will have to undertake…...T.O.R.