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Lamb cost of production: Finishing lambs
We present costing and performance insights for lamb finishing, using Farmbench data.
What does the 2023/24 season tell us?
Cost of production per lamb (£/kg) for the 2024 season is similar to the three-year average. Total income has increased for the 2024 season; this aligns with the higher market prices.
On the cost side, Farmbench all performance groups saw higher total feed and forage costs for the bottom 25% performers. There is a significant difference in feed and forage costs between the top 25% and bottom 25%. The bottom 25% overall cost of production has been directly impacted by the feed and forage costs.
Labour and machinery costs continue to be the highest of the overhead costs due to wage increases and rises in machinery and equipment costs.
Overall, the top 25% continue to have a positive net margin; the middle 50% and bottom 25% have negative net margins. The main reasons for this are lower total income for both the middle 50% and bottom 25%, higher overheads for the middle 50% and higher feed and forage costs for the bottom 25% of users.
Lamb finishing ranked by full economic net margin, per head of output
| Lamb finishing: Cost of production | 2024 Lamb finishing | Three-year average (2022, 2023, 2024) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 25% | Middle 50% | Bottom 25% | Top 25% | Middle 50% | Bottom 25% | ||
| Key performance indicators | Cost of production per lamb (£/kg) | 2.77 | 2.95 | 3.62 | 2.62 | 2.73 | 3.53 |
| Daily liveweight gain (kg/day) | 0.15 | 0.10 | 0.01 | 0.11 | 0.11 | 0.06 | |
| Lamb mortality (%) | 0.75 | 0.70 | 1.30 | 0.73 | 1.04 | 1.30 | |
| Enterprise details | Number of lambs sold/transferred | 485 | 293 | 313 | 309 | 436 | 254 |
| Technical performance | Feeding period (days) | 91 | 69 | 93 | 95 | 71 | 68 |
| Liveweight at sale/transfer (kg/hd) | 44.11 | 43.52 | 42.57 | 43.98 | 43.63 | 41.00 | |
| Carcase weight (kg/hd) | 21.04 | 20.83 | 20.32 | 20.10 | 20.54 | 19.86 | |
| Non-forage feed fed DM (kg/hd) | 12.84 | 11.15 | 50.96 | 6.55 | 11.43 | 35.50 | |
| Harvested forage fed DM (kg/hd) | 10.43 | 7.86 | 13.36 | 4.35 | 6.94 | 87.89 | |
| Income (£/head of output) | Total income | 136.86 | 113.33 | 110.08 | 124.81 | 105.70 | 100.88 |
| Variable costs (£/head of output) | Vet and medicine | 2.10 | 1.72 | 3.17 | 3.79 | 1.43 | 3.11 |
| Total variable costs | 94.32 | 93.49 | 109.78 | 88.21 | 88.74 | 94.66 | |
| Purchased feed including minerals | 2.56 | 4.07 | 20.64 | 2.13 | 4.10 | 14.67 | |
| Home-grown forage variable costs | 0.68 | 0.84 | 0.68 | 0.77 | 0.95 | 1.52 | |
| Total feed and forage costs | 6.76 | 5.39 | 21.73 | 4.23 | 6.44 | 16.52 | |
| Overheads (£/head of output) | Total labour | 9.73 | 15.18 | 9.02 | 11.05 | 12.02 | 16.13 |
| Total machinery and equipment | 5.72 | 7.22 | 5.58 | 5.24 | 5.83 | 6.35 | |
| Total property and energy costs | 1.74 | 2.46 | 2.21 | 1.97 | 1.78 | 3.20 | |
| Total administration costs | 2.02 | 2.62 | 1.75 | 2.00 | 2.01 | 3.40 | |
| Total overheads | 21.32 | 29.64 | 22.44 | 22.82 | 24.26 | 33.71 | |
| Cost of production and margins (£/head of output) | Full economic cost of production | 122.41 | 128.52 | 153.94 | 115.25 | 119.44 | 144.89 |
| Full economic net margin | 14.45 | -15.19 | -43.87 | 9.56 | -13.74 | -44.02 | |
Characteristics of top- and bottom-performing beef and sheep farms
Our insights are informed by a statistical examination of the Farm Business Survey and a case study analysis that identifies what the key actions of top performers take that promote success.
The study also offers a list of considerations for ways in which beef and sheep farm businesses can improve their margins.
Understanding the data
Farmbench is an online benchmarking tool that allows you to compare your farm to similar businesses, facilitated by AHDB and our Farmbench managers.
The latest production year insights have been pulled from the tool and displayed below.
A ‘production year’ means a 12-month period which covers all financial and physical activity relating to the production of the annual crop (plant or animal) from an enterprise. For example, the 2023/24 production year is associated with 2024 lambing, and calving for autumn 2023 and spring 2024.
For 2023/24 insights, the Farmbench tool gathered data from a total of 97 farms across England.
This 2023/24 total included 77 suckler herd, 31 finishing beef and 58 store beef enterprises, and 84 breeding flock and 56 finishing lamb enterprises.
All the data has been averaged into three benchmark groups and ranked by full economic net profit margin: top 25%, middle 50% and bottom 25% performers.