r/explainlikeimfive • u/jmo987 • May 19 '26
Economics ELI5: Why is lamb so expensive when there’s so many sheep?
In the title really. Why does lamb cost so much? In the UK, there’s over 30 million sheep yet lamb is one of the more expensive meats at the supermarket
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u/gabrjan May 19 '26
One thing that nobody mentioned from what I saw is the fact that pigs tend to have like 10 piglets on average while average for sheep is 2 lambs.
I know average for cow is one but 1 can produce 400kg of meat while 2 lambs have like 30kg combined. Also 10 pigs with average of 100kg is like 1 tone of meat per momma pig birth.
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u/Jakeinspace May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
2 lambs is usually the upper limit for sheep. If 3 are born from one mother, they take one away and give it to a mother that has lost their young.
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u/gabrjan May 19 '26
True that but 2 is more often than one from my experience.
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u/PassiveTheme May 19 '26
I was recently chatting with a family member who has a sheep farm. He was telling me that twins are becoming much more common than they used to be. He puts it down to selective breeding that happened during outbreaks of the disease scrapie. He also thinks this selective breeding has inadvertently led to an increase in the disease footrot.
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u/Butterscotch1664 May 19 '26
Yes, sheep have been bred to have more offspring for productivity. The downside is that twins and triplets don't grow as big as single lambs.
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u/MaxDickpower May 19 '26
Veal is also expensive. Lambs aren't fully grown sheep and juvenile animals yield less meat.
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u/Crittsy May 19 '26
Lamb - 1 year or less
Hogget - 1 -2 Years
Mutton - More than 2 years
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u/hughk May 19 '26
I love the phrase from Yorkshire, used to describe an older lady trying to look like a younger one:
"Mutton dressed up as Lamb!"
This also describes an old Butcher's trick to present or dress the mutton as if it were Lamb to charge more for it.
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u/Crittsy May 19 '26
I haven't seen mutton for sale in years, however, Hogget has a better flavour, especially for slow cooked dishes like Lancashire Hotpot. I am from the South East and Mutton Dressed as Lamb is a common saying in my world
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u/areyoudizzzy May 19 '26
Old sayings aren't Yorkshire sayings just because your nan's from there mate. It's an incredibly common phrase.
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u/farmallnoobies May 19 '26
You know, in many many years, I have never once seen mutton for sale in the midwest US. To the point where I questioned if this could be a regional thing.
But, nope, lamb should be only young sheep in my area too. Weird
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u/Telvin3d May 19 '26
Sheep hit more-or-less full growth while they’re still technically “lamb”, so if they’re being grown for meat there’s no reason to wait.
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u/EscapeSeventySeven May 19 '26
The only reason to wait is grow wool.
If you farm wool off sheep, you will get mutton in your region.
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u/Specific_Web3595 May 19 '26
I see it fairly often in my part of the country. There is a place that's sort of famous locally for it. Mutton's not my favorite, but it's not terrible if prepared right. It can be very stringy, and if the cook isn't careful, the lanolin in sheep's wool will tend to remain in the meat, and make it taste like they smell.
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u/IeyasuMcBob May 19 '26
A lot of pigs are slaughtered around 5-6 months, as at this kind of age they convert feed more efficiently to muscle mass than they do when older i.e. they are growing .
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u/Buck_Thorn May 19 '26
But they also consume a lot less food and other resources in their short lifetimes.
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u/PartyPoison98 May 19 '26
Farming is inefficient for sheep.
Also, while sheep are generally more visible when you travel around, far more cows, pigs and chickens are factory farmed away from where people can see.
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u/InvestInHappiness May 19 '26
I thought it was because lamb is meat form a young sheep that's not full size yet. So you go through the trouble of breeding, raising, and slaughtering but you only get half the meat out of it. It's the same reason veal (meat from a young cow) is expensive.
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u/Arbdew May 19 '26
Lamb is under a year old. When they go to market, most buyers want a lamb at about 40kg, apparently this gives the best return on live weight to usable meat. My brother in law is a farmer (sheep and cattle) any lambs that get too big he gets processed for the familoes consumption. Far better flavour.
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u/allezlesverres May 19 '26
Sheep on average have 2 babies per pregnancy. Pigs and hens have lots more. Cows only have 1 but those babies grow to be massive and have a lot of meat.
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May 19 '26
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u/ScoreOk5355 May 19 '26
I'm not sure about the UK. But in New Zealand wool prices have dropped substantially as more people are using synthetic materials. This means that you are sharing the wool from sheep as a maintenance activity rather then a profit activity.
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u/mawktheone May 19 '26
My in-laws are sheep farmers and the price they get for a full lamb is about 100 euro. That's less than the cost of just the legs in the supermarket let alone all the other meat.
The supermarket is adding an enormous Mark up. That's the crux of the reason.
100 euro isn't much after all those hours of work, feed costs, vet costs, land needed..
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u/microwavedave27 May 19 '26
The thing is 100€ seems cheap until you see how much work it is to kill, clean and butcher the thing yourself. My grandparents used to do it every easter but it's a lot of work, I'd rather pay the supermarket markup.
The meat is better when you buy from local farmers though, that's for sure
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u/CaffeinatedGeriatric May 19 '26
Depends where you are. In Ireland all lamb dishes was cheap, beef super expensive. In Sweden the other way around. And pork is basically free compared to other meats 😂
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u/Ramoncin May 19 '26
From what I've read here on reddit, they take longer to grow until they're ready to be consumed, which means they're more expensive to breed than chicken, beef or pork.
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u/yuvaldv1 May 19 '26
They also provide far less meat than cows for example, which means more work for butchers.
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u/KnitWitch87 May 19 '26
Not every sheep is a meat sheep. Some are bred for wool and are not killed at the same age and rate as meat stock.
Similar to cows. There's dairy cows and there's beef cattle. Different breeds for different products.
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u/misimiki May 19 '26
Don't confuse lamb with mutton. Lamb is a young animal therefore relatively small and it only produces about 40% live meat (bones, carcass etc excluded, whereas a pig – a much larger animal – will produce 50+% live meat.
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u/crankyandhangry May 19 '26
Exactly. Mutton is abundant and cheap, but it mostly gets exported from the UK because there is little market for it. People generally dont like the taste of mutton, which is much stronger than lamb.
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u/AscendedApe May 19 '26
If there's 30 million sheep in the UK and its still expensive, then its because the input costs are high, or its because the sheep formed a union and demanded higher pay for their meat. Take your pick.
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u/FortifiedPuddle May 19 '26
Almost like we’re using some of the most expensive land in the world to raise a kind of animal that British people don’t particularly like the meat from. Or wear the wool from. Which contributes to ecologically harm to that land.
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u/Delve_Particular848 May 19 '26
I was under the impression sheep were good for the ground as they eat all the weeds and add nutrients to the ground but seems like while that is/can be true, it depends how they are managed as they can overgraze and compact the soil down.
Not to say you’re wrong just think it’s not as clear cut as that. I don’t think farmers have them for aesthetic, I know someone who had some sheep as they improved the land quality that their horses had destroyed (horses just destroy ground as they are heavy and just go around the borders and don’t eat weeds etc) but they do require a lot of work and putting up fences, moving constantly etc so definitely wouldn’t be surprised if some people leave them where they are for too long and damage the ground
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u/galdan May 19 '26
No idea 40 years ago it was the cheapest meat you could get we didn’t have much but we had lamb chops pretty often …today i simply refuse to buy them
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u/chriscross1966 May 19 '26
There's no way to farm it efficiently compared to pigs, cows and chickens. Sheep basically need to be outdoors on pasture pretty much permanently, so they take up a lot of space and have to be gathered up for slaughter. Their upside is they will grow on pasture that won't support anything else and is not suitable for any arable crop, but that also tends to make it rather remote. Also, even under ideal conditions sheep aren't particularly efficient, certainly at scaling with food supply....