There was a lot of uncertainty among sheep farmers as they approached the store lamb season with grass growth struggling up until early August. Coupled with the expected decrease in winter fodder availability and it was difficult to know how store prices would go. Figures from Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) show that the average price paid during the first six weeks of the season was £50.58/head which represents a 1.5% increase on the price paid in 2017. A total of 170,218 new season store lambs have been put forward for sale so far this year a drop of 9.3% on last year’s figures.

The biggest drop has been seen in blackface stores where numbers are back by nearly 22% on the same period last year. Higher lamb mortality rates during the difficult spring months are being felt at auctions with overall numbers expected to be down on last year, come the end of the year. However, the difficult grazing conditions during the summer could also lead to lambs coming to auction later.

The last week in particular has seen a massive spike in the numbers of store lambs going for sale. Throughput last week hit 42,070 head. The average price paid for the week was £50.25/head. Numbers were boosted considerably by two large sales with a combined total of over 15,000 head at Dingwall Mart. The sale on 06 September had over 8,800 cheviot lambs comes to the market with an average price paid of £43.72/head.

Another large sale of just under 5,800 head took place on 7 September. Suffolk and continental cross lambs performed well on the day. The 1,533 Texel cross lambs sold for an average of £57.86/head while Suffolk cross lambs averaged £54.07.

A large sale of lambs also took place at United Auctions Stirling mart where the average price paid for the near 8,300 store lambs was £53/head.

Texel cross lambs performed well at £63.67/head, as did Cheviot lambs which made £57.71/head.