The real path to natural farming requires that a person know what unaltered nature is, so that he or she can instinctively understand what needs to be done – and what must not be done – to work in harmony with its processes.

— Masanobu Fukuoka.

Whole lamb, cut to your specifications: $8/lb hanging weight + processing fee Processing fee is usually $75 per animal.

Your lamb will be cut to your specifications, packaged, labeled, weighed, and frozen. We will provide you with a Cut Sheet. You fill out the Cut Sheet which will walk you through the options for your lamb, and we give this to the butcher.

Approximately how much do I pay for a whole lamb? How much lamb will I get?

Live weight is how much the lamb weighs when it is ready for butchering. Most of our lambs are going to weigh between 90-100 lbs when they are processed.

Hanging weight (also known as the carcass weight or dressed weight) is the weight of the animal after you remove the inedible parts (hide, hooves, head, innards, and some of the bones). Hanging weight is estimated at 54% of Live Weight. Average hanging weight for our lambs is about 50lbs.

Yield or Take Home Weight is how much meat you actually put into your freezer. Yield is estimated at 55-70% of Hanging Weight. That is a big range, but it really depends on what cuts you get. Some cuts of meat have more bone (like a bone-in roast or lamb chops), and some cuts have no bone (ground meat or kabob meat). We tell our customers to plan on about 60% of hanging weight.

For estimation then, our lambs live weight is about 95 lbs. Hanging weight will be 51.3 lbs. Cost will be 51.3 x $8/lb + $75 processing fee (what our butcher charges us). Total price for a whole lamb, with this example, will be $485.40.

Take home weight will be 28-35 lbs.

In our example, this translates to a price per pound of $13.86-$17.34. The higher price per pound would be for all ground or kabob meat… no bones. If you had cuts that have a lot of bones, then the price per pound would be lower.

Regardless of the cuts you order, you can choose to keep any organs (heart, kidney, liver) and bones that are not in the cuts. Grass-fed meat bones are fantastic for making bone broth!

How much freezer space will I need for my lamb?

Plan on approximately one cubic foot of freezer space for every 15-20 pounds of meat. The interior of a milk crate is slightly more than a cubic foot. For a lamb, you will need about 2 cubic feet of freezer space. A whole, processed lamb will likely fit in the freezer that comes with your refrigerator.

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