When a baby lamb is born, it is considered a lamb until it is about 12 months old. At that time, most people consider it past the prime of harvest. Typically, a lamb is harvested right around 7-12 months. If you were to butcher later when a lamb is considered a sheep, the quality of the meat decreases as the sheep gets older, and most people consider this mutton, a less desirable product.
In March of 2019, we had a male lamb born. Harvesting has been on our list of things to do for the last month or so, but with the holidays, it did not get done until last week. Greg shot the lamb, skinned and gutted it, then placed it in the walk-in cooler. It had a hanging weight of roughly 75 pounds.
After it hung for six days, it was then butchered. Greg did it himself. When you do something like this once every couple of years, you need a refresher. So, what do we all do? Google it and watch Youtube videos. He watched a couple of videos beforehand, found one he liked, then watched it while he butchered, pausing along the way. Butchering animals is a complex skill that requires years of practice, and we have a serious shortage of butchers in the US.
There are a couple of tools that are needed in this process. A bone saw & a good flexible boning knife.
After everything was cut up, we shrink wrapped the cuts and placed them in the freezer.
All except the upper half of the ribs. We cooked those up for dinner moments after Greg cut them up. Farm fresh, never-frozen lamb ribs. We picked out a Garlic Brown Sugar glaze recipe. (We did substitute thyme for rosemary in the recipe). It was delicious!
Ribs generally have very little meat on them. Our one 75 pound lamb gave us five small portions worth of food. The lower half of the ribs produced thin slabs of uncured lamb bacon (of sorts) that we saved for a special feast later.
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