Culling

We raise purebred sheep primarily for their fiber and lambs. I like to spin and weave, and have been an admitted fiber addict for over a decade and a half.

This past year we've been very successful with our lamb crop, as well as adding new animals to the flock and so we find ourselves with a need to reduce the flock numbers to a manageable size for the winter.

Ideally I'd love to sell my beloved creatures to loving shepherds who revel in newly shorn fleece as much as I do, but that's not reality.

The first consideration is that all of the lambs born this year are not animals I would want to breed, nor would I want to sell them as breeding stock. As fiber animals or pets, yes, but not for breeding purposes.

So, we consider our alternatives and of course slaughter for meat is the next step.

Now, with a critical eye and emotional attachments put aside, its time to sit with the lambs and decide who is going to be added to the breeding group and who will be sold, and who will be slaughtered for meat. Tough call especially when I watched them as they were born, dried them off, and stood off to one side to see they found the udder for their first meal on earth.

This year we also have yearling rams and mature rams who need to move on as well. Hard to do as I have a special fondness for the boys who are more bold and adventuresome than the girls.

In our area of Central New York, on - farm slaughter is only an option if the meat will be used by us. Should we decide we want to sell the meat, matters become somewhat more complex in that the animals must be transported to a USDA facility and approved for human consumption and sale to the public. We've done this in the past but not lately. It is an hour long trip one way and much more costly than a custom slaughter house.

We can sell to a buyer who will then send them to the slaughterhouse of their choice but there seems to be a good deal of stress on the animal and so, I'm a bit reluctant to take that path just yet.

We can also transport them to auction ( also an hour away ) where they will be held in a pen, bid upon and sold to the highest bidder. This is almost certainly to be a meat buyer who will transport them to the slaughterhouse...ditto on the stress level.  Not my highest choice.

 We could advertise and sell individual animals to a person looking to buy a whole or half of a lamb. In this arrangement, the lamb doesn't actually change hands, but we would transport to the slaughterhouse, arrange for the buyers' cuts of meat and the buyer would pick up the meat, paying the butchering fee to the slaughterhouse at the time. This is an acceptable option, but won't relieve us of the 25 or so animals we need to disperse soon.

For us, the ideal would be to slaughter the animal ourselves, on the farm, where it has been raised, as stressfree and swiftly as we can, then butcher and sell the meat, but this isn't yet an option. Demand for such has resulted in a mobile USDA butchering plant  in at least one N.Y. county as an experiement, but that county isn't ours.

What will be left behind will be the best animals we have for the coming breeding season and the chance to improve the quality of the Finnsheep breed in our own way.

We have loved and cared for our flock and derive some comfort from the knowledge that they have had short but happy lives. In the words of one shepherd, " A whole lot of really good days, and one bad day". 

We should all be so fortunate.

Regards,
Kathryn