The latest market outlook from AHDB has stated that the continuing tight supplies at the start of 2019 may offer some support to farmgate prices. However, the tight supply will not come as a shock to the industry which means action can be taken to reduce any potential shortfall in supply.

AHDB is not currently forecasting a glut of lambs to be slaughtered in the fourth quarter of 2018, as some comments within the industry have suggested. Quarter four slaughterings are forecast to be down 7% (260,000 head) compared with last year’s quarter four, although 6% (190,000 head) higher than quarter three this year.

Overall new season lamb throughput for 2019 to September are running 10% or 550,000 head back on 2017 levels. In the year-to-September, 9.1 million clean sheep have been slaughtered, a 4% (340,000 head) decline year-on-year, according to the latest data from Defra. Of these, AHDB estimates that approximately 4.8 million were new season lambs, while the remaining 4.3 million head were old season lambs from the 2017 lamb crop.

The report expects that 12.9m head will come forward for slaughter between January 2018 and May 2019, but how many old season lambs will be carried into 2019 is not yet clear.

If quarter four slaughterings were to be high in 2018 then it would have a knock on effect on early 2019 slaughterings.