How much meat will I get from a Soay sheep?
Quite a bit. But not surprisingly, not anywhere near as much as you would get from the big hulking Suffolks and their ilk. Let me walk you through some numbers we have accumulated (remember the Chief Shepherd here at Saltmarsh Ranch is a data geek). An opening caveat. Because Soay are spring lambers and they are so much smaller than domestic sheep, you really need to wait until they are at least a year old to butcher them. That means keeping them over a winter and that means buying hay. We take our animals to the butcher in the fall when they are a year and a half old, after they have had a full summer of free food in the pasture and before they start eating their second winter of pricey hay. We do not have the occasion or facilities to weigh our full-grown sheep, so the best I can give you in terms of weights is hanging (post-kill, pre-cut and wrap) weight versus the weight of the packaged meat. I have reliable data (no gaps) for the hanging weights and packaged weights of eight butch
