Ewe Hogget prices

Am I alone in thinking that hoggets aren't €1 dearer than any other year atm? Granted the local shows and sales are yet to take place which usually is the height of the trade but still. I've watched a power of good hoggets of all breeds sold lately at €150-180, the sort of sheep that would fit in with most lads flocks.

There's an odd real fancy pen making €200-€250 (€287 for monsters of Suffolks is the tops so far) but there very much in the minority. For every pen that crosses €200 another fails to reach €150, there's a good proportion of them would have been worth more to kill last May. When you see lad's repeatedly giving €100-€130 for ewe lambs I can't help but thinking there in for an awaking when it comes to selling hoggets atm. I saw a bundle of nice Texel hoggets bought by a real sheep man last week, when I enquired as to the price I was told €177. They'd have cost that any year I remarked and I was told that he gave €170 to €190 for similar ones last year.

I don't know how lad's do it tbh. They'll soon be giving as much for the ewe lambs as there taking for the hoggets and running them for 12 months and all that comes with it for free. I watched a man sorting 150 hoggets for sale the other day. Between picking them into 10s and 12s of matched types, taking care marking them etc and listening to everyone telling him that he should have done it a different way you'd want patience. I'd say he'd struggled to average €180 for fair type sheep and what will it take to buy in ewe lambs to replace them. You could have landed the whole lot of them into the mart last May and sold them in batches of the first 30 that ran in and I'd say you'd hit a bad day before they'd fail to clear €180. There'd be no talk of this one having the wrong head or being loose in the wool either.

The stylish ewe lamb locally is making the price of an average hogget atm with us atm. I think €170 odd was the tops today but €150 was common enough, you'd buy fair hoggets other weeks at it. As for the special sales it takes awhile to get established and draw in those repeat customers. What would the €280 hogget cost as a ewe lamb? The renowned hogget producer's locally regularly gave €140 for top drawer ewe lambs in ordinary year's and €250 would have been considered a serious price for them as hoggets the following autumn.

I'm not trying to run down anyone's system and if it works for you then that's all that matters. However if I were to pull in around the ring today and buy an average type ewe lamb at let's say €120 and show similar hoggets next week I'd think you'd do well to clear €180. When you'd have all fixed up in the office I couldn't see there being much change due to you.

As for the sorting it's not the work that would bother me but the lack of remuneration. Any man with average type hoggets so far would have been better paid to have killed them all last May imo. Granted what would you have stocked the land with all summer but those sort of sheep haven't earned €1 since and could just as easily loose money. It is a kind of pyramid scheme imo. Every year there's less men to buy breeding hoggets and more customers for ewe lambs from what I see.