Interactive lesson

Sheep meat and milk, step by step

Interactive lesson: what a small flock gives, when a lamb is ready, how to milk ewes, safe milk and cheese, and which ewes leave the flock.

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The whole lesson as text

1. What the flock gives

First work out what a small flock gives you in a year.

Meat per ewe — A ewe gives roughly 25 kg of meat a year, counting lambs and cull ewes.
Milk and cheese — Up to 120 L of milk for milking per ewe. 1 kg of fresh cheese takes roughly 4–5 L of ewe's milk.
Wool and manure — On top of that, 1.5–5 kg of wool and roughly 400–500 kg of manure with bedding per ewe.
Meat or milk — For a big spit lamb the lambs suck for 3–4 months and there's almost no milking. For cheese the lambs are weaned at 30–60 days and the ewes are milked into summer.

Why: A ewe gives meat, milk, wool and manure, but not all of them in full at once. Every litre you milk is a litre the lamb didn't drink, so decide in advance what matters more to you.

The figures are rough and depend on the breed, the feed and whether you share the milk with the lambs.
A flock of 6 ewes gives roughly 6–10 lambs, 150 kg of meat and 300–700 L of milk for milking.

2. Lambs for meat

Choose a lamb by its weight and by the feast you're raising it for.

Milk lamb — 6–10 weeks old, 12–18 kg live weight. For roasting whole in the oven.
Spit lamb — 3–4 months old, 20–25 kg live weight. The carcass is roughly 45–55 % of live weight.
Weigh the lambs — Weigh yourself, then yourself with the lamb. A lamb gaining 200–250 g a day is ready; one gaining 100 g is sick or hungry.
Plan from the feast — For a 20–25 kg lamb at Easter you need a lamb born around mid-December to January, so tupping in mid-July to August.

Why: A milk lamb, a spit lamb and a finished lamb differ in age, weight and use. A lamb that was never weighed often turns out too small for the feast.

Ram lambs usually go for meat, and ewe lambs from the best mothers stay in the flock.
Separate ram lambs from ewe lambs by 4 months at the latest.