Lean Times Don’t Have to Mean Lean Lamb

Sheep Symposium Focuses on Marketing

Chris Torres
Staff Writer

PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE, Pa. — When it comes to lamb meat, leaner is not always better.

That’s according to Dr. Paul Kuber, a meat specialist from Ohio State University, speaking at last Saturday’s sheep symposium “Surviving the Economy,” here at the Samuel E. Hayes Jr. Livestock Evaluation Center.

Kuber showed a group of sheep producers how to evaluate their animals for meat production, based on his years of experience working for meat packers in both the U.S. and overseas.

His message: leanness in lamb can limit your marketing ability.

Nearly all lamb meat — 98 percent according to Kuber — is graded “choice” or higher, even though other lower grades do exist. It is also graded based on the amount of meat it is expected to yield, 1 being the best in terms of marketable retail cuts of meat and 5 being the lowest.

When it comes to the meat packers, Kuber said “yield grade 2” is preferred because it offers more opportunity in terms of cuts with its thicker layer of fat.

Kuber assessed four lambs brought in for a demonstration on meat evaluation.

While they looked basically the same to the naked eye, except for one noticeably smaller lamb, once Kuber began to rub and feel the animals, he quickly noticed the differences between each one.

“We can assess quality without actually splitting open the carcass,” Kuber said.
The smallest lamb, he said, would make a good yield grade because it was lean. But two other lambs he evaluated, with slightly thicker fat covers, were also good. It just depends on the market where they are being sold.
“There are markets for all these lambs out there,” he said.

According to a February report released by the Agriculture Marketing Resource Center, a program funded by the USDA for research into value-added products, about 40 percent of lamb consumed in the U.S. comes from imports, mostly from Australia and New Zealand.

Producers in those countries can actually raise their animals and transport them to the U.S. cheaper than they can be raised here.

Marketing, plus the fact that most of those animals are grassfed, the report noted, are also factors that allow those producers to compete with U.S. producers.

Kuber pointed out these numbers during his talk, adding that sheep do well consuming grass and that you don’t need as much fat on a lamb for juiciness or flavor.

Again, it comes down to marketing.

“We’re a society of many mild consumers. We don’t like a lot of taste. We try to find moderation,” he said. “What I tell producers is to find a happy medium. Sometimes it’s a combination of things that need to be looked at.”

After evaluating the animals, Kuber moved on to the second portion of his presentation as he evaluated an actual carcass.

The average carcass weight for a lamb ranges anywhere between 50 and 80 pounds, give or take a few pounds.

Evaluating the carcass is important because it can impact breeding decisions and the way the animal is fed.

It can also show a producer if the animal is being handled the right way once it gets to the slaughterhouse. An example of this is red “blotching” in meat that sometimes occurs because of excess stress placed on a lamb when it is getting ready to be stunned for slaughter.

Kuber said the blotching doesn’t affect taste and is perfectly safe, but it’s not good for presentation and consumers don’t like seeing it in their meat.

“When it comes to making decisions on your animals, you have got to look at the carcasses,” he said.

The symposium included presentations on how to market animals for the Muslim market and at farmer’s markets.

New Lamb
and Wool Queen
The newest Pennsylvania Lamb and Wool Queen was also crowned.
Rebecca Hyde, 17, from Crawford County, was the only one vying for the crown, which usually has around five contestants.

She takes over Jan. 1 for 19-year-old Mallory Ketterer from Berks County.
Hyde is currently the Northwest Pennsylvania Lamb and Wool Queen.

She hopes to visit plenty of schools during her time as queen. She feels educating young people on sheep and lamb is an important step to getting a new generation of people interested in it.

“I really like to visit schools,” Hyde said. “You get a piece of wool, they see it, and they are so excited. That makes me feel good.”

The sheep symposium was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Sheep and Wool Growers Association and Penn State along with the American Lamb Board and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

A silent auction benefited the Pennsylvania Sheep and Wool Growers Association, and symposium attendees had a chance to sample lamb recipes at an evening reception.

A beginning shepherd’s workshop took place the following day.