We don’t monitor, measure or record data here, we are not researchers, but simple farmers who keep a diary and observe – we make notes, we weigh stock to sell. You will get my point in a minute.

I worked off-farm for a number of years and during office tea-breaks I would always be trying to convince my colleagues of the merit of doing their bit to support the sheep industry by buying more lamb to eat.

One thing that always came up, especially in autumn/winter time, was: “I don’t like the taste”.

Buying local

We get our lamb from a local butcher who processes his own lamb and he castrates everything, so I could never figure out what my colleagues were on about. That was until I started buying lamb elsewhere, entirely for the purpose of my highly scientific trial, and then I got the dreaded “ram taint” that I had heard about, but been unaware of – I only had the word of Joe Public, who at the end of the day is the only data I need, as we rely on them to eat our lamb.

A lady I worked with actually brought in the lamb chops she had cooked the night before for her family as proof.

Castrating

Low and behold, when they were hanging up in the abattoir they weighed and came into the same money

We started castrating some lambs at birth with rubber rings and observed, sorry guys I have no hard data to back this up, that these lambs were growing every bit as good as their entire comrades. Low and behold, when they were hanging up in the abattoir they weighed and came into the same money.

This year we decided to castrate all the ram lambs born after the first 100 ewes lambed. Again, we based this on nothing more than dates in our head, as we figured the ram lambs born off the first 100 ewes (20 February to 3 March) would be well gone through the system by the time their testicles started interfering with the meat taste.

We are farming sheep a long time and I think we have a fairly good handle on assessing lamb thrive

We have been so surprised by the castrates – these are all visual assessments, again we have no hard data, but we are farming sheep along time and I think we have a fairly good handle on assessing lamb thrive – their wool is tighter, it has a better shine to it compared to the entire rams, growth seems to be exceptional, the castrates handle better too, which is a critical selection criteria for slaughter.

Muslim festivals

I know the Muslim market demands ram lambs at certain times of the year, but the only muslim festival that requires entire ram lambs is the EL AL EID and it only lasts for one week at most in August/September. We have a lot of other customers to keep happy, and I don’t know about you, but the word on the street has to be included in any “data” for it to be creditable.

We have to listen to what the consumer is telling us

We cannot keep supplying a product that just because we think its 100% everyone should eat it, we have to listen to what the consumer is telling us. At the end of the day, sales data is the only data that puts euros in our pocket, so that will do for me on this subject.

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