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Low lamb kill numbers in November
Friday, 11 December 2020
By Bethan Wilkins
The UK lamb kill in November was 6% lower than a year earlier, at 1.16 million head. This is the lowest November lamb kill since 2015, though the months are not entirely comparable as slaughter was reported on a 4-week statistical month basis at the time.
Although earlier in the season lambs appeared to be coming forward more quickly than usual, it seems this trend has not been maintained. Nonetheless, since June we have still slaughtered slightly (+2%) more lambs than we would expect, based on a normal kill pattern and current estimates for the size of the lamb crop this year.
The overall decline in kill numbers was driven by GB trends, where lamb throughput was down by 7%. In Northern Ireland numbers were actually up by 5%.
Carcase weights were similar to last year, with the average at 19.6kg.
In addition, as has been the case for most of this year, adult sheep slaughter was well behind 2019 levels. At 109,400 head, throughput was 20% lower than last November. The decline in adult sheep slaughter has been somewhat larger than anticipated this year. This may boost the carry-over of lambs for slaughter in the New Year, if fewer ewe replacements have been needed. Alternatively, the flock might not have contracted quite as much as we forecast. We will look at this in more detail for our next outlook report in January.
Altogether, sheep meat production was 9% down on the year at 25,400 tonnes, a relatively low figure for the time of year.
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