Reports from factories and farmers point to early born lambs performing well above normal this spring. While this is a welcome situation after last year’s extremely challenging and costly experience, it is leading to some farmers getting caught out in terms of lambs exceeding the paid carcase weight and optimum fat cover.
This has been reported in greater frequency by factory agents and producer group members, some of whom have faced significant price penalties as a result.
Weight limits
Most factories have also raised paid carcase weight limits from 20kg to 20.5kg as of 1 May so it is worth investigating what is the exact situation before sending lambs.
It is also well worth tweaking your drafting pattern and handling lambs more frequently to ensure lambs are selected at the optimum weight and fat cover.
Many early lamb producers are creep-feeding lambs so there is little merit in investing cost into lambs and ending up giving factories free meat.
Young creep fed lambs will achieve a kill-out percentage in the region of 48% to 50%, while aged lambs which have an average cover of flesh and are drier in the wool will achieve a lower kill-out falling back to 44% to 45%.
Assessment
It is important that lambs are assessed on a combination of fat cover and weight rather than weight alone, with a risk of lambs going overfat where brought to heavier weights. Ewe lambs will be more prone to going overfat than wether and ram lambs.