SageHill Ranch Journal

[SteepedInSheep]

Harvest day yesterday. Three lambs. This is the last time our butcher will be here he closed his shop (will be taking these three to another butcher he recommends) and has a job at a huge place in --- Arkansas. Another one bites the dust .
All went well, as to be expected. After all was said and done, he said to me - Nice lambs as usual. Wow - doesn't get better than that and from a butcher who has won awards in his craft. One of my clients, a neighbor, was here for the harvest and took all the innards. By noon she was working on head cheese and had already had spleen and eggs for a late breakfast - said it was yummy.

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Now three ewes definitely going to lamb. The two blacks and a brown who I ~thought was preggers all of the sudden has a big ol' bag. She's not too wide so probably a single. Good as she's a first timer.

How many lbs of meat per lamb?

 

[SageHill]

How many lbs of meat per lamb?

I'll know for sure once they are butchered out. The new butcher will be giving me their final weight. I like to keep final live weight (taken the day before harvest) and packaged weight. Previous lambs have varied from 48-56 lbs. Harvest at ~5 mos. weight range in the past 80-104 lbs And - while twins and triplets are great to go to auction, keeping for the freezer I like singles so far. Either that or I'll have to do bottle lambs on multiple births leaving one with the ewe. Not sure I'm up for that (at least so far).

 

[Ridgetop]

Singles do gain more and faster than multiples. Keeping lambs as rams instead of wethering them also results in faster growth.

 

[SteepedInSheep]

I had seen that multiples are *seemingly* preferred when lambing but I agree about the singles. They have such a great head start. We're raising ours for meat so we're looking for a bigger carcass.

 

[SageHill]

I do keep them as rams - so there's that .
The last batch of lambs up to the auction - a single bidder bought all the lambs - so guessing then that multiples pay off that way perhaps? If they were larger - which would only be ~10 lbs I'm guessing the price at auction would not be that much more if any. Happy with what I got per head and it's the most per head so far.
Thinking now that singles stay for private sale or our freezer and multiples to auction.
There's so much to learn.

 

[drstratton]

I do keep them as rams - so there's that .
The last batch of lambs up to the auction - a single bidder bought all the lambs - so guessing then that multiples pay off that way perhaps? If they were larger - which would only be ~10 lbs I'm guessing the price at auction would not be that much more if any. Happy with what I got per head and it's the most per head so far.
Thinking now that singles stay for private sale or our freezer and multiples to auction.
There's so much to learn.

Congrats on getting a good price.

There is a lot to learn about any kind of animal or insect care(lol) isn't there. I've learned a lot from everyone here. Most people have no idea. The time, the work and the knowledge, it takes to do what you all do for your animals.

 

[SageHill]

Congrats on getting a good price.

There is a lot to learn about any kind of animal or insect care(lol) isn't there. I've learned a lot from everyone here. Most people have no idea. The time, the work and the knowledge, it takes to do what you all do for your animals.

Always learning! Watch, read, observe, try hard, repeat

 

[drstratton]

Always learning! Watch, read, observe, try hard, repeat

Exactly!