Karie writes:
<<This spring will be our first year having Shetland lambs. When
sending them off for meat do you still do this in the fall (since they
are so small) ? I know I do not want to feed extra lambs hay all winter
just to send them off in the spring.>>
We sell and send to the butcher most of our lambs in early November or
late December (have to time butchering around hunting season around here
:) Yes, the lambs are small, but people don't mind because it's so much
simpler to cook and you don't have to worry about having the whole
neighborhood over for a leg of lamb :)
Also, the lambs gain so little during the winter that the additional
meat (a pound or two is all, much of the time) is not worth feeding
longer for. Shetlands take a good 2 years to reach adult size.
Gwen responds:
<<Possibly you could help off-set the cost of that extra hay from the
fleeces of those lambs, by shearing them just before sending them off? >>
We don't find this practical--but of course, we end up hay feeding about
8 months here. Although the lambs do have a goodish fleece length by
butchering time, they are so small that the wool is worth lots more on
the pelt, so we have the skins tanned with wool and sell those instead.
Occasionally we have an exceptionally beautiful fleece, such as the
bicolored black/gray of an Ag lamb...but it also makes an exceptionally
beautiful pelt, so we still tan the skins :)
Sara wrote:
<<For lamb to taste like lamb instead of mutton, they should go to
the butcher shortly before sexual maturity - regardless of size.>>
This doesn't seem to be true of Shetlands. A couple years ago we took a
4 year old ram right from his breeding group, killed him immediately,
hung him one day, and butchered him ourselves. I labled his packages
with his name, as I figured I'd want to know that the roasts should be
stewed and flavored, not eaten relatively plain. However, his meat
tasted no different from any 6 month old lamb from our flock. People
also remark on the lack of a 'ram smell' on our ram's fleeces. After
several years of experimenting, we have found it entirely unnecessary to
wether any of our ram lambs, so long as we separate them April-born
lambs from the ewes by the end of October.
We've never had gamey-tasting meat from our flock, and most people
comment on that and want more. We had one person from NZ who said she'd
rather have more 'flavor'--but she's the only one :)
Holly
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