Strategies for Increasing the Number of Lambs Marketed per Ewe

An objective of every commercial sheep producer should be to maximize the pounds of lamb marketed per ewe per year with the given feed, facility and monetary resources available. By increasing the pounds of lamb marketed per ewe, the relative fixed costs of maintaining a ewe are spread over more pounds of salable lamb and the efficiency of lamb meat production is improved and net income is increased. Since most producers market lambs at a constant weight, the major factor determining pounds of lamb marketed per ewe is the number of lambs raised to market weight per ewe. Presented in table 1 is the effect of different flock production levels on flock feed efficiency