Lamb is one of the healthiest meats you can buy because it is not grown in industrial farms and is usually grown in the wild or family farms.
Lamb meat is more expensive per pound compared to pork, beef, etc. Mainly because sheep are smaller than pigs or bulls in size thus more expensive per pound alive.
Why Is Lamb So Expensive?
1) Lamb meat is older than other meats
There are several reasons for explaining why you have to pay extra for lamb meat, the first one is lamb meat is older than most other meat when it reaches its slaughter weight.
The longer a farmer takes for an animal to reach the marketplace, the more resources it takes, the more time and money it will take.
2) Lamb’s Selling Process
Most slaughterhouses buy animals from pet dealers because they don’t want to spend a day at the auction until the sheep are sold. It is also possible to receive groups of sheep from a specific farm, but the farm’s timescale and slaughter needs may not overlap the same timetable. Livestock traders typically visit local auctions and purchase animals to fulfill orders at slaughterhouses.
Then the merchant made a living by selling more money to the slaughterhouse than he paid for. This price is in addition to the amount you pay for the meat. Butchers buy it at some additional price and after that, they sell it to; your post adding their profit to the price.
3) Lamb Yield is Low
Another major reason lamb is more expensive than other meats is that meat production per lamb is lower compared to other common beef animals in the United States (sheep and goat products are almost the same).
For comparison, dairy products from common animal carcasses are:
- 50% lamb and goat
- Cattle 60%
- 65% of pigs
- Chicken 70% (broiler)
- If you sell lamb for 100 kg, the carcass yield is 50%, that is, 50 kg.
4) Lamb meat is not grown on industrial farms
Inexpensive meat is grown on factory farms. Lamb meat is not bred in the factory. This is good for lamb, but you have to pay more at the checkout. Lamb meat is not bred in extreme conditions like most other meat animals raised on industrial farms. Lamb is sensitive to stress and doesn’t grow enough to make mass production profitable on factory farms.
Summing up
The main reason lamb costs more per pound than mutton, pork or beef, is that you need more money per pound to put lamb meat in the freezer. Adult sheep are much smaller than cattle so imagine a little lamb in the place. If lamb and the steer had the same weight during butchering(1000lbs) and made the same effort to reach consumers, the cost of a pound of meat would be about the same.
Lamb can easily be less expensive because reproduction is common in sheep, but it is rarer in cattle, so sheep can breed faster than cattle.