Sheep throughput totals are running ahead of 2013
Lamb price is continuing to head in a good direction from the farmer's point of view. Sheep throughput (including ewes and rams) so far this year is running about 1pc ahead of last year. When we look at lambs only, however, there is very little difference in the annual throughput to date, but the pattern of sales has changed over the past year.
I will firstly examine the period from mid June (when mid-season lamb start to come on stream) to early October. There were 66,000 or 7pc more lambs slaughtered during this period in 2014 compared to 2013. This reflects the excellent grass growing conditions we had this year, combined with weather conditions that supported lamb thrive.
