In Praise of Mutton

I don’t know how many times I have told clients that not only do we sell lamb but we also sell hogget and mutton just to have them reject the mutton immediately even though the majority have never tasted it. Even fellow shepherds often do not consider mutton as a viable product line.  This article is my argument that older animals not only can provide high quality meat with a strong market but sale of mutton can bring in a good revenue stream and can contribute in a meaningful way to flock improvement.

To make sure all readers understand what I mean by these different meats from sheep, lamb is from an animal under one year of age, hogget is from an animal between a year and two years of age and mutton is from an animal over two years of age.

First I would like to discuss numbers.  A quick tally of all animals passing through Ontario sale barns shows that nearly 30% are mature sheep approximately 50,000 animals.  A recent article in the Toronto Star stated that Mr. Greek, a large Toronto butcher, processes close to 200 mutton animals a week.  If you extrapolate that to either the Canadian or American market you are talking a very large numbers. This is not a niche market but rather a mainstream market that seems to be forgotten. Consider if you could increase the revenue from one third of your flock. This is not potential income that should be dismissed.  

As populations within the world move and countries become  more diverse, we, as shepherds need to consider not only a diversified client base but also a client base that wants an expanded product line that includes mutton.  It is not only up to the individual shepherds but also up to marketing boards and industry organizations to proactively grasp the opportunity to develop and expand these markets for the benefit of producers. 

Industries often fail because they are very narrow in their focus.  For example, the movie industry suffered when television entered the market.  Their focus was narrowly aimed at the production of movies rather than a broader focus of entertainment.  Shepherds likewise can get stuck in the narrow focus of lamb production rather than looking at production of high quality food.  There are other product lines possible beyond that but that is for a different article.

In 2004, HRH the Prince of Wales launched Mutton Renaissance (http://www.muttonrenaissance.org.uk/) to re-establish the market for mutton on dinner tables in the United Kingdom.  The organization set production and processing standards to ensure the consumer had access to a quality product.  And I meant to say re-establish the market for mutton because this meat was a staple in households in the United Kingdom until quite recent times.  All you need to do is look at first class menus from passenger ocean liners from less than 100 years ago to see mutton commonly served.  This movement is a fine example of what we can do to improve both the reputation and subsequently the market and the revenue from mutton.

Our own operation is tiny by today’s flock size averages but we have always considered marketing mutton as part of our farm product line and revenue stream.  We have advertised, introduced the uninitiated and marketed our mutton with the same effort as we do our lamb.  As a result, we are able with very little effort sell all we produce.  We do ensure that the quality of our mutton is equivalent to the quality of our lamb. Mutton graces our own table more often than lamb and I can truthfully tell our clients that mutton will be a delicious addition to their menu. The revenue we get from mutton sales is much better than if we shipped these animals to the sale barn.

At the beginning of this article I mentioned that sale of mutton is integrated into our flock improvement plan.  If our market was exclusively for lamb, we would be doing the numbers game on maximizing the number of lambs we ship to market and would probably be keeping ewes for production that we currently are shipping for meat.  Because we have a good revenue stream for mutton, we have made our culling criteria more stringent allowing us to improve the quality of our breeding animals at a faster rate than if those ewes remained in our flock.  As time goes on our culling criteria has become more focussed.  Would some of our culls make good breeding stock in other flocks…. Probably but now we get more income from them as mutton.

So where do we go from here?  First shepherds need to look at production of mutton as a separate product line not as a discard.  The breed and marketing organizations need to expand their focus to include mutton, hogget and lamb and the industry needs to embrace entering the market in value added products with these meats.  If it has not already been defined, the production standards for the different consumer markets need to be identified and voluntary standards set to meet these markets. Shepherds need to be educated in ways to meet these standards. Processors need to be educated on the preferred methods of handling mutton. The consuming public needs to be re-educated about the quality and merits of mutton as a delicious alternative to their diet reversing the negative reputation of this meat.  At the same time the consuming public that already wants this meat should have improved access not only through private sales but also through mainstream markets.  When was the last time you saw mutton for sale in a mainstream grocery store?

My main goal for this article is to encourage shepherds to explore the opportunities with expanding into the mutton market and hopefully increase the revenue stream from a significant percentage of your flock. 

Laurie Maus

Hawk Hill Farm

Heterosis or the healthy mutt

Most livestock breeders have heard the term "hybrid vigour" in which the cross between two breeds grows better than either of the two purebred lines.  Heterosis is the formal name for this.

In the sheep world, commercial producers take advantage of this by crossing two maternal type breeds such as a Rideau Arcott with a Dorset to create an F1 cross.  The F1 cross is then mated to a terminal sire breed such as a Suffolk or Hampshire.  If done well, the resulting market lamb is superior than from each of the purebred lines.

We cross our two maternal lines so our F1 cross is a North Country Cheviot/Tunis cross. This hybrid is indeed strong, vigorous and grows well.  We are still working on which terminal sire breed works best with this cross and our production system.  We are trying a Hampshire cross this year.


With heterosis comes a certain degree of unpredictability.  However that unpredictability is reduced if the two parental purebred lines used are inbred.  While you always create your cross from the best of your purebred lines, the mixing of genotypes leads to less predictability in the resulting phenotype ie how the animal will look and perform. In some extreme cases the parental genes are incompatable and the hybrid is less vigorous than the parental lines. This is where data collection is very important.


It is common practice for breeders of purebred stock to line breed, that is mate closely related relatives to enhance desirable characteristics such a growth rate or conformation type.  This increases homogeniety and predictability of the offspring but also can come at a cost known as inbreeding depression.  The extreme of this is the appearance of lethal recessives such as spider syndrome in Suffolk sheep.


The reality is that breeding selection is focussed on relatively few measurable characteristics and the rest of the genome comes along for the ride.  In some cases the changes are positive, some negative but on the whole the inbred animal is less gentically fit than an animal that is outcrossed. 

While our purebred lines (especially our Cheviots) have some very desirable measurable characteristics, in my opinion, they are too inbred and we will be searching for unrelated lines to use for an outcross.


Lately I have been reading articles on the impact of inbreeding on disease and parasite resistance in sheep and am seeing the fitness advantage of the heterozygote.


There is very little in the livestock literature on the impact of inbreeding on parasite resistance but there is information on wild populations of sheep.  In these publications, inbred lines are more susceptible to internal parasites working as a natural selection against inbred lines.

Scrapie is another instance.  At first blush it makes sense to include selection for resistant lines in your breeding program.  However it never makes sense to breed for a single characteristic.  In this case, adding resistance to your flock should be done slowly without sacrificing production characteristics.  I know that in 18th century Britain scrapie was thought to be the result of inbreeding; maybe they were right. Is heterozygosity the way to go with respect to scrapie ie gaining some resistance, not sacrificing other characteristics? At this point I can honestly say I am not sure. We will continue to genotype and use quality rams with resistance genotypes.  However, we will not sacrifice quality in a effort to maximize resistance.

Breeding livestock is not a set formula but rather a dance where you go back and forth but ultimately make your way across the dance floor.  Your goal is to move forward but that requires knowledge, research and accurate,detailed data collection. I strongly feel that a wholistic approach needs to be used where the health, longevity, fertility and welfare of the animal has to be considered.  You may not make as rapid advances in characteristics such as rate of gain but I am banking on this approach reducing your costs by producing a healthier and more "genetically fit"  animal.


TTFN,


Laurie

Why we don't go against nature at Hawk Hill

I read with interest the article in the Ontario Sheep News on fish meal supplementation to supply omega 3 fatty acids in ewe ration and its impact on the subsequent lamb's ability to withstand a bacteria toxin challenge (endotoxin).  While it was scientifically interesting, this is not the direction that our farm wants to go.

The first reason is that sheep are herbivores, not omnivores, and feeding animal-based proteins to herbivores is what got the sheep industry into problems in the first place with conditions like scrapie.  No, I am not saying that fish meal can transmit scrapie, but I am questioning a nutritional supplement that is so totally foreign to the natural diet of sheep.

The second reason is the effect of the fish supplement on the quality of the meat.  As a teenager, we lived in Sweden.  At that time, the Swedish pork industry was using a fish based feed supplement.  It was, beyond the doubt, the worst pork I had ever eaten with a distinctly fishy flavour to the meat.  We do not want to use any feed supplement that can create off flavours in the meat and reduce the quality of our product.

Man's manipulation of domestic animals is but a moment of time in the evolutionary scale.  That is especially true with respect to recent manipulations for the more intensively raised livestock.

Sheep have evolved to breed at a time so that the lambs were born when vegetation is young, supporting the increased nutritional demands for a lactating ewe as well as for a rapidly growing lamb.  In our climate's case (and the British and European breeds that have evolved for our climate) that means a birth in April or May.   Not surprisingly, omega-3 fatty acids in forage peak at the same time as lambing.  Forage sugars and proteins also peak at that time.

All this begs the economic and in some cases physiological costs of trying to paddle against nature's current.  In my opinion the way to minimize health problems and economic costs in your flock is to quit trying to breed out of season. 


The demand for Easter lamb actually originated in the Mediteranean  where the climate naturally produces lamb in that season.  So is it reasonable to expect production systems in a northern climate using breeds developed in northern climates to try to mimic a Mediteranean production system using Mediteranean breeds?  My opinion is no.


 Does that mean only seasonal availability of lamb?  Sure, but it is a long season from spring lamb in May, June to heavy lambs from September to January or even later.  Off season, there is hogget and mutton, two very good meats that need to be promoted again. 


Each shepherd must make their own decision as to the production system they want but they must recognize going against our climatic realities comes at an economic and management cost. At Hawk Hill, we acknowledge the realities of our climate, our breeds and our forage production season and manage our breeding and marketing to reflect that reality. 


TTFN,
Laurie

Humane Management of Livestock

We are designing a sheep handling facility to make it easier to vaccinate, trim, sort and body condition check the sheep. If you are planning a facility, your best bet is to look at the research and recommendations of Dr. Temple Grandin. Dr. Grandin is a very much respected authority on the human handling of livestock. We just picked up her book on humane management of livestock and what an amazing reference. She has such good insight on animal behaviour and how it can be used to move and handle livestock in a stress free manner.

And why is this important? Primarily is the moral consideration. Just because an animal is being raised for meat production doesn't mean that it should be handled any less humanely than an animal that is not raised for meat. Be it our horses, who now are mainly pets, or our sheep or cattle, they all get the same level of care and compassion. Another reason is explained by Dr. Grandin. Meat from animals that are stressed is prone to be dark and not last as long in storage. I also believe that it has a significant impact on tenderness and flavor.

Dr. Grandin also discusses the current approach to breeding livestock. Too often breeders focus on one trait to the exclusion of all others be it rate of gain, production, performance, colour etc. This often has an unexpected and unintentional adverse impact on other traits such as temperament, longevity, fertility. Like with our horses, our breeding program is looking at a balance of numerous traits.

Along that line, I also am surprised that flavor so seldom figures into a breeder's production goals. I suppose it is because flavor is individual and is so difficult to test. I would love to see more taste tests used as part of breeding success. Ultimately the customer is the judge and if it doesn't taste good they judge with their wallet. Flavor is always going to be front and center with our goals.

Check out Dr. Grandin's website. It is very good reading.


TTFN
Laurie

Sold Out- Hawk Hill Market Lambs

We are very satisfied with our first full year of lamb production at Hawk Hill. We had 8 ram lambs for sale and all are sold except for the one we are keeping for our own freezer (there has to be some perks to this job). One purebred, registered ram went for breeding stock and we hope he will throw as nice progeny as his father. The others have been shipped as market lamb and every one was pre- ordered before they were even weaned.

We already have some feedback (excuse the pun) from our clients and the consensus was "delicious". Even our butcher commented that ours were the best lambs that he had processed this year. It makes us very proud.

We have two more lambs to head to market, probably at the end of November. We also are preparing the hides to be tanned (two of those have already been booked as well.)

Our ewes are getting back into condition and will be rebred in December.... and then we start all over again.

We are taking this Indian summer break to catch up on winter preparations.

Cheers
Laurie