2017 By the Numbers

I’m finally getting around to totaling up my 2017 lamb crop numbers. Partly because I’m about to order vaccine for the 2018 crop already, and I need to know what to buy! Here’s how the season turned out, and what changes I’ll make this year to continue to try to knock out sources of loss.

 

Get Your Lambs, Stat

This has been a great growing year, more lambs than usual are hitting weight this fall and winter. Whereas usually I have more stragglers that wait til 9-12 months old to be ready to go. Now it’s looking like the last of the lambs may be going in December, January and February, and we’ll likely be out before Easter. If anyone was holding back on ordering, now is the time, before they are gone until fall 2018! I have a couple of spots left for the December butcher date, just in time for a Christmas lamb leg roast!

Lambs are $200 each live, and will be above 85 lbs live weight. This will render hanging weights in the forty-pound range, with final cuts in the high thirty pound range, depending on how many bone-in vs. boneless cuts you order. You also pay me $60 for the slaughter truck crew, I pay them in one check for each batch to simplify their lives. Then you pay Kelso’s, the custom butcher, directly for their cut & wrap services, which is typically $45+ tax. This pencils out to about $8/lb averaging over all the cuts, which is less expensive than grocery store retail, because there is no distributor in the mix taking his cut. You can find a deposit order form on our website here.

Our lambs have been raised naturally on pasture all summer, and they come into the barn to finish for their last 4-6 weeks on local grass hay, alfalfa, and a small bit of whole grain corn/barley for extra energy in the cold. These are very lean, healthy lambs with mild flavor. I’ve been told by some that lamb raised in this region is some of the best they’ve tasted in the world!

 

Dry Months

Fall is definitely here, with cool nights, and finally, some rain, after a long drought. In August, I weaned all the lambs, and put the ewes in drylot on hay for the short term. This saves the green grass for the lambs, giving the fields a rest until fall rains refresh them. It also gives me a good opportunity to walk the line and look at the condition of all the ewes, survey their udders, and spot any problems that need addressing before breeding season in November.

 

Switcheroo

Lambs are arriving in a steady fashion, we’re up to 40 today. It’s mostly uneventful, but there are always some interesting developments. One situation surprised me.

 

Twenty Minutes

Is how long it takes for four rams to find five fertile ewes in a group of 120 ewes all circling in chaos. This happened last September, I was doing some chores in the field and driving back and forth between pastures. At one point, I only shut one of a double-gated passage, thinking I was going to go back through there in a few minutes. The mature rams are vigilant and watch my every move when I’m going through gates, and they don’t miss an opportunity. I must not have latched the gate securely, and they pushed it open while I was distracted doing something in the field. I figure they were in there for about twenty minutes before I was able to get a dog and wrangle them all back to where they belonged. Twenty minutes resulting in nine early-bird lambs born at the end of February.