My relatively limited experience is that there is no such thing as uniformity of size in the horned blackbelly sheep. I've had yearlings only come up to 50 pounds, and I just sold/slaughtered two yearlings at right around the 100 pound mark.
"When to slaughter" I think starts with a program of trying to raise animals that will reach a reasonable size in a reasonable amount of time. We're working hard to eliminate freeloaders from our flock and breed animals that will meet certain weight gain criteria. I see no point in butchering a yearling that will fit on the Weber spit. That being said, it probably takes a bare minimum of 9 months to have any decent amount of meat on a blackbelly carcass. Otherwise, you can pretty much butcher them anytime you want. We are trying to synchronize our flock so that they will all be bred in March for August babies. That is not so good for having lambs on spring pasture, but it gives us 10 months to actually finish our lambs on spring/early summer grass and butcher in late June when the grass is starting to lose its nutrition. These lambs have been large enough to butcher, and drop dead delicious. I have found that weaning lambs at the same time that I am finishing lambs are two mutually exclusive operations in my particular situation. If you can extrapolate anything from the grassfed beef raising information, the animals has to be old enough to have most of its frame-growing done and be putting on fat to produce the most toothsome table meat. Everything I've applied from beef to sheep has been spot on. Because I raise our sheep "naturally," i.e. don't pour the concentrates to them after weaning to make them grow artificially fast, we experience a flat spot in their growth after weaning (if they are not on really rich pasture). So my guess is that any natural, farm raised lamb, particularly blackbelly, will be far from the industry growth rates that we are accustomed to seeing. Anyway, give it time to grow out its frame and "finish" before you butcher, and you will likely have a more flavorsome product, not to mention enough to be worth packaging. Regards, Barb L. _______________________________________________ This message is from the blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
