The sheep trade has experienced significant fluctuation in recent weeks. Demand is currently, firm with lambs and hoggets in tight supply.

Factories report a significant number of both hoggets and spring lambs falling outside of their required specification and, as such, facing the potential of significant price penalties.

The first class of animal highlighted is tail-end hoggets or light crossbred and hill hoggets in particular that are lacking flesh.

These hoggets are killing poorly, with some falling below the desired carcase weight of 16kg to 17kg.

These animals killing at such a poor carcase weight for the time of year are generally also underfleshed and recording a fat score of 1 or scraping into fat class 2.

Penalties

Penalties being imposed range from 80c/kg to upwards of €1/kg. Factory agents say that there will be demand for hoggets for many weeks, given that lambs are likely to be low in number.

They are urging producers to feed them on or to explore the live sale route with a relatively good demand persisting for store hoggets.

The other category of hoggets at risk of falling foul of specifications are aged and over-weight hoggets.

Procurement agents report that it is not uncommon for hoggets to be presented and killing at weights of up to 30kg carcase weight.

There is more attention being placed on whether these hoggets have two teeth set.

If so, some plants are warning that aged and excessively heavy hoggets will be cut back to ewe price. If in doubt, it is worth checking before presenting hoggets.

Spring lambs

Procurement agents report lambs are also achieving a relatively good kill-out, but comment that there is massive variation in isolated cases.

Well-fleshed young lambs which are being creep-fed are generally achieving a kill-out percentage in the region of 48% to 50%, with some very young lambs killing at carcase weights of 18kg to 20kg topping this level.

This should be borne in mind when drafting, along with the carcase weight to which factories are paying to.

Most remain at 20kg, but there are deals being completed as high as 21kg to 21.5kg.

This level of kill-out contrasts with aged lambs, which have endured a difficult spring.

In this situation, it is not out of the ordinary for kill-out percentages to reduce back to 45% to 46%. It is also important to assess these lambs on a combination of predicted carcase weight and fat cover.