Prices for sheep of mutton age are low; not quite a third of the price per pound paid for lambs, according to each issue’s “Sale Barn Prices” tables in sheep!  A systematized sheep operation must normally sell at least one cull ewe or ram for every 6 to 12 lambs sold.

      Of course, the best growers always factor a “ewe depreciation deduction” into each year’s lamb crops, on top of wintering expenses, plus summer grazing cost for all of them.  But suppose cull sheep fetched half the money a lamb brought, instead of just a third.  How much more a sheep operation might return if mutton were promoted as the true delicacy that it is!

      If an old ewe sells for $45.00 today, then half again more would make $67.50.  If a grower got $1 profit from an old $45 ewe before, then he’d get $23.50 now.  Over 23 times the profit!

      A plan like that might even justify fattening the old gals up a bit, adding a little “plumpness” to the profit!

      Instead, old ewes today are often just old bags of bones when sold.  Much of this meat goes into pet food and Third World countries at 18 to 40 cents/lb.  Sadly, this can be true of the lesser cuts of top-quality lamb, too.  Ah well, who can begrudge them a cheap gourmet meal (even if at our expense)?  Their poverty was forced on them when past leaders postponed impossible debts onto today’s citizens.  For the same reasons, and the way America is trending nowadays, there may soon be demand again in the U.S. too for those cheap lamb cuts.

There’s More To Buyer Satisfaction Than “Rock-Bottom Prices”

We can take a lesson from the apes on why consumers will or won’t pay more for the lamb or wool they truly desire and enjoy.  Please bear with me here, because first we need to analyze their motivation for buying or not buying, not just their desire for gratification in its strictest sense.

      In the October 3, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal (online) there was a story titled “Our Kinder, Gentler Ancestors,” by Frans B. M. de Waal, PhD.  The story touched on animals’ reaction to unequal rewards for doing similar jobs.

      In the story, Dr. de Waal mentioned what he observed when monkeys got a substandard wage a job completed:

…If one gives two monkeys hugely different rewards for the same task, the one that gets the short end of the stick refuses to cooperate.

   We hold out a piece of cucumber, which normally entices any monkey to perform.  But with its neighbor munching on grapes, cucumber is simply not good enough anymore.

   They protest the situation, sometimes even flinging those measly cucumber slices away, showing that even monkeys compare what they get with what others are getting.

The point Dr. de Waal makes is that even with an ape’s IQ, cost-vs.-return is not a consumer’s only motivation.

      There is (in addition to practical considerations) an irrational but inborn sense of “fairness” that governs behavior, even in animals.  This “fairness sentiment” can rule out a favorable response to a seemingly good deal.

      Dr. de Waal, who has written a number of books on primate behavior and is a professor of primate behavior in Emory University’s (Atlanta) psychology department, says that also human beings—worldwide—tend to reject a deal if it seems unfair to them, even if they stand to gain heavily by it.

      “They may accept a split of 60 for proposer and 40 for themselves,” he says, “but not an 80-to-20 split.”

      A “60-for-them, 40-for-me split;” what a deal!

New Jersey has the costliest sheep pastures in the U.S., according to the table on “U.S. Pasture Cost/Acre” in sheep! magazine’s November/December 2008 Price Reports.

New Jersey pastures on average cost $12,500 per acre in 2008.

In the same price tables, South Dakota had the cheapest pastures in the 48 contiguous states at only $350/acre.

Yet South Dakota had some of the highest sale barn sheep prices in the West, appearing at or near the top in every issue’s Price Reports.

New Jersey is blessed with large nearby cities where lamb is popular, and where buyers pay top dollar for gourmet meat.

Two-thirds of a sheep’s “sale barn price” is “overhead”-production costs.  Smallish 110-lb. lambs sold for $1.13/lb. in South Dakota last July-about $124.30 each; with $41.33 net return to growers.

Harvested, cleaned and chilled, a freezer lamb weighs about half the on-the-hoof weight (in this case, 55 lbs. each).

According to the latest sheep! Carcass Yields table-they’d sell for about $247.07 per 100 lbs. wholesale (after deducting processing fees).

Sold direct like this, they net $164.41-nearly 4 times the profit of conventionally sold lamb.

But wait!  sheep! “Spot Kosher” reports show New York City lamb sold retail for about $5.99/lb. to $6.89/lb.  Direct-to-consumer sales can bring more than $348 for a 110-lb. lamb.

Subtract a custom processing fee of about $60, for a net of $288:  That’s seven times the profit of growers who neglect to read and heed each issue of sheep!

The sheep! annual U.S. Pasture Cost tables reported South Dakota pastures sold for only 9.6% the price of costly Northeastern pastures.  Yet the latter rented for only $31.50 per acre-not quite double the South Dakota cost of $15.90.  Who would have guessed costly pasture could be rented so cheaply before sheep! magazine reported it?

Don’t misunderstand.  South Dakota growers are legendary in their profitable lamb production.  Even so, shrewd bargaining, plus a willingness to line up repeat retail buyers, brings sheep! readers up to 7 times the profit, even on costly land.  Subscribe now, and get ahead this year.