hi everyone,iwill be buying some easy caresheep hopefullypreety soon and was wondering how much the market dictates for this breed ?

have a look at the Exmoor Farmers web site or Greenslade Talor Hunt at sedgemoor market.

I cannot answer your question but would be interested in hearing, from time to time, how you get on with them.

Don't worry about raising the topic as we won't feel you are just trying to promote the breed. It is just that there could be many of us wondering about the details of keeping them, returns, hassle etc.

ive looked at auctions etc and still cant find any pricing for these sheep so an average price to pay would be appreciated

maccaa:

ive looked at auctions etc and still cant find any pricing for these sheep

Sometimes I am tempted to develop a bit of Dave3ism in  my posts - this is one of those!

maccaa,  Easy Care sheep are a fairly recently developed breed.  You are unlikely to find them just popping up in your local store sales any time soon.  If you were to try putting  'easy care sheep' into any search engine you would find, as I did, that one of the results would give you the easycare sheep society website (that bit is underlined and an odd colour so that it forms a hyperlink - click on it and the easycare sheep site will open in a new window).

On that site you will find contact details of breeders with stock for sale.  You can get this section by clicking on the link that says 'stock for sale'.  You can find out their prices by emailing or ringing one of them up. 

Peter Wells:

I cannot answer your question but would be interested in hearing, from time to time, how you get on with them.

 

I'd also be interested in hearing about what you find if you go out looking for them.

Jon

 How much are they worth to you? 

what are you looking to buy rams or ewes or lambs?

females depending on age between 70 and 150. males 350-600  

Is this really considered to be a "breed" of sheep rather than one person (or his family) pushing them purely for financial gain? I remember reading about them when living in the UK, and considered it was just yet another attempt at making easy money out of people who lacked farming experience. Easy care sheep are quite common in Australia. For anything up to 200 years ewes have lambed totally unaided in a hostile environment and anything that failed to survive simply also failed to procreate, so that survivors automatically became easy-care. Nobody, but nobody would ever call out a vet to a sick sheep. It would be shot and, if considered not a disease risk, fed to the dogs.

old mcdonald:

Is this really considered to be a "breed" of sheep rather than one person (or his family) pushing them purely for financial gain? I remember reading about them when living in the UK, and considered it was just yet another attempt at making easy money out of people who lacked farming experience. Easy care sheep are quite common in Australia. For anything up to 200 years ewes have lambed totally unaided in a hostile environment and anything that failed to survive simply also failed to procreate, so that survivors automatically became easy-care. Nobody, but nobody would ever call out a vet to a sick sheep. It would be shot and, if considered not a disease risk, fed to the dogs.

 

 

Have to agree with you Robert Bakewell was just a money grabbing sod and then everyone who has every started a breed since!

All breeds start somewhere and easycares have been a registered as a breed for the best part of a decade.

The easy lambing is really a minor part of the easycare breed it is more about the wool shedding.

I do feel like quite a lot of other people that easycare is a very bad choice of breed name but that was really up to the man who stared the breed.   

old mcdonald:

Easy care sheep are quite common in Australia.

Actually "Wiltipolls" are currently the fastest growing purebreed in Australia with several flocks in the thousands. Quite a few flocks of Wiltshire Horn over a thousand down there too. I noticed in the newsletter section on the Easycare board some mention of importing some of those genetics into the UK. I've imported Wiltshire Poll semen from both NZ and Australia and I am really liking the animals I'm getting out of my Wiltshire Horn X ewes with those genetics.

 Jon 

hiya,

I would be very interested to know if somebody has cooked and tasted the meat of easy care sheep. what i meant is some meat takes pure ages to cook and u need a pressure cooker and they dont taste great either. To my little understanding Texel are the best in the kitchen and on the table!

thanx

mohammad

 

 

I think the University of Idaho's food science dept did a taste and tenderness study on sheep several years ago and the Dorpers were at the top in both catagories. I'm sure the dorper websites could steer you towards it. I've been told by a couple people who grew up eating tropical hair sheep in the Caribbean that wool sheep never taste right to them.

Jon

All the taste and tenderness tests on meat (beef and lamb) I have seen seem to indicate thet although breed and diet do influence the end result, more important still are low stress at slaughter and how the carcass is treated afterwards.  We kill our lambs at 7 or 8 months old and the carcasses are hung from 10 to 14 days.  Most british butchers (and supermarkets) would hang them for less than a week.

Mohammad's experience of lamb, or muttoin, is probably influenced by cultural factors originating in hot countries where there are few refrigeration options.  I understand that in most cases this would result in the meat being eaten on the day it was slaughtered.  In the UK we know that most of the older sheep going through the markets end up in the 'ethnic' trade.  If cull ewes are not hung for 2 to 3 weeks I'm not surprised they need a pressure cooker!

Thank you both dogjon & jacobus both of yous comments are based on facts,

as i understand most common lambs we get in our British market are British Texel, and its accepted among the butchers as well as by common masses as a quality meat. I would appreciate if someone can give some idea, what is ratio among the common breeds reard on the British Lands particularly for meat production?

As Jcobus said, i must agree that my expcerience of lamb and mutton is somewhat based on my cultural background, but not all of it, we have similer feeling about lamb and mutton even today, once its tander and tastier next its rubbery and tastless? I had feeling may be some people are selling SHEEP meat but call it a LAMB meat. Again its a cultural thing i heard from some elders? please correct it if its not a fact?

thanx

mohammad

maccaa:

ive looked at auctions etc and still cant find any pricing for these sheep so an average price to pay would be appreciated

We went to an EBLEX meeting the other week and were speaking to a woman who breeds them and she said that most of hers go through local butchers as they don't have the greatest of conformations they tend not to perform as well at markets so the only ones she takes to the market are the poor ones she just wants to get rid of. She also said that most that have them or go in to them convert their exsisting flock over to them.

As for the taste and toughness everyone I have spoken to including chefs have said the samething if its tough its not been hung long enough. Where sometimes have one of our own lambs back for the freezer you can always taste the difference in it from the ones from the supermarket hence the reason why we don't buy any beef now. 

My neighbour had a small flock of what we nicknamed easycare sheep. They either lived or died!

It's one way of ending up with very tough ewes. Unfortunately they also didn't touch or wean their lambs till slaughter( usually as hogs) so flock was always served by rams lambs and became very inbreed.

The only reason for easycare sheep can be the wool shedding. If you want that, why not go for Dorset Horn? It's an old established breed and has reasonable conformation and good carcase. Not my sort of sheep but seems to cross well with other breeds too.

sheepbreeder3:

My neighbour had a small flock of what we nicknamed easycare sheep. They either lived or died!

It's one way of ending up with very tough ewes. Unfortunately they also didn't touch or wean their lambs till slaughter( usually as hogs) so flock was always served by rams lambs and became very inbreed.

The only reason for easycare sheep can be the wool shedding. If you want that, why not go for Dorset Horn? It's an old established breed and has reasonable conformation and good carcase. Not my sort of sheep but seems to cross well with other breeds too.

 

 

i think you must be confusing Dorset horn with Wiltshire horn.

Opps! !  Yes. I mean't Wiltshire horn but I'd just been reading about Dorset Show hence the slip. 

Thanks for that. SB3

I'm kind of wondering why they only used the Welsh Mountain sheep in Easy Cares? You've got alot of different hill breeds over there, most of which I've never heard of. If the Welsh Mountain was the best all around hill sheep wouldnt all the hill guys be running them? I kind of like the Euros Nolana Project approach to making a shedding sheep. Take the wool sheep that have traditionally performed the best in your environment and then bring in the best shedding genetics you can get your hands on and keep good production records. Horses for courses.

Jon

MohammadAkhtar1:

hiya,

I would be very interested to know if somebody has cooked and tasted the meat of easy care sheep. what i meant is some meat takes pure ages to cook and u need a pressure cooker and they dont taste great either. To my little understanding Texel are the best in the kitchen and on the table!

thanx

mohammad

 

As a Texel breeder, the advantage of the breed is that they have relatively little fat, and a large muscle mass with respect to bone.    The flavour and texture of the meat depends almost entirely on the feeding regime, and how the animal is handled before and after slaughter - Texels are no better and no worse than any other breed in that respect.  

As a regular customer of our local Indian ( in fact Bangla Deshi ) restaurant, what appears on the menu as "lamb" is in fact mutton.  What they buy it as I don't know.

 

 

Easy lambers, self-shedding, good disease resistance.....Sods to catch:-) Soay

southernskye:

Soay

 

Theres no meat money in they sheep,unless you sell the product privetly,go for some Beulahs,there good if crossed with Texels (a nice sized carcas)

sjk:

As for the taste and toughness everyone I have spoken to including chefs have said the samething if its tough its not been hung long enough.

There is no doubt that hanging and cooking are crucial to flavour. However, there is a feed factor. Whenever I have finished lambs in plum and apple orchards the flavour is enhanced a great deal.

Peter Wells:

There is no doubt that hanging and cooking are crucial to flavour. However, there is a feed factor. Whenever I have finished lambs in plum and apple orchards the flavour is enhanced a great deal.

Hi Mr Wells, I very much understand of your words of feed factor in taste of the meat, it makes complete sense, "you are what you eat"

However i dont understand the factor of haning that affect the taste and toughness, I would appreciate if you could describe the process of hanging animal? how its done? after killing! and how it makes the difference?

regards,

mohammad 

 

 

 

 

MohammadAkhtar1:

I would appreciate if you could describe the process of hanging animal? how its done? after killing! and how it makes the difference?

If you forget the references to pigeons and take it as applying to any meat or game bird this explanation from Heston Blumenthal in the Grauniad is straightforward and easy to understand.  With lambs, they are always hung as the whole carcass, with beef it's usually a side or a quarter.  Game birds are hung by the neck before drawing the innards or plucking.