Eating sheep!!

[alsea1]

Well, we tasted our first mature (six or seven years old), in breeding mode ram. I will have to replace my avatar pic as he is now in the freezer.
He is delicious. No strong muttony flavor or anything.
We made sheppards pie with some of his ground up shoulder this eve.
We butchered him just like we would do a deer. That includes no bones and trimming away the fat and sinew. We got over thirteen pounds of ground meat and stew meat off the shoulders alone. Will be finishing up hindquarters and backstrap soon.
The American Black Belly sheep are great table fare.

 

[Southern by choice]

ok now your making me hungry!

 

[bonbean01]

That's the great part about hair sheep...our mature ram who got nasty also had no mutton taste, and he was so much better behaved in the freezer

 

[alsea1]

LOL bon. Very true.

 

[Southern by choice]

I didn't know this. We have goats. LOL and 2 sheep... for wool. So hair sheep and wool sheep meat is different?

 

[alsea1]

I have eaten a wool type weather. He was really good too. But we butchered that fella before he was a year old.
He did have a different flavor though.

 

[Roving Jacobs]

I have a yearling jacob coming home from the processor this week and I can't wait! You're making me hungry!

 

[bonbean01]

Someone told me that it is the lanolin in wool that gives that mutton taste when they get older? Wool sheep that are just under a year or not much older than a year don't have the mutton taste. Hair sheep are different. Watson was a three year old ram who got into the butting thing big time...it's be nice, or it's freezer time.

 

[Southern by choice]

Thanks Bon.

 

[boothcreek]

Yea, love my hair sheep!!! Butchered a 3 yr old Ram this spring and the guys at work(abattoir and butcher shop) couldn't believe he didn't smell muttony. Carcass looked like a deer but without a strong game taste. Even the European Mouflons which unlike domestics, still rut(if your a hunter, they kind of smell like a rutting elk minus the peeing on them selfs part), and the last rutting ram I butchered was fantastic. Could put him besides a 10 month old hair lamb carcass and smell and taste is the same, he was just darker meat colour. Actually had a Euro Mouf Ram Barron Roast for dinner last night!!! Yummy!