waitrose buying,our fault?

[gatepost]

I know my head is now going in the lions mouth but every time I go to market which is most weeks, the place is full of poorly bred and badly finished stock( I don't know if the rush to farm as per NZ has anything to do with this) are we killing our own trade with our own attitudes? discuss, if anyone wants me I'm in the Anderson shelter.

 

[hillman]

Why do people have to blame someone ......nz for their style isn't surely responsible for poor management over here ?

Maybe this ties in with the show pony thread ......

Its hard to call why there is such a diverse range of quality maybe it's cause there are more breed types over here which give this diversity and they in turn match the ground that they are been farmed on
As like here all the better ground Is tillage or dairy pushing the dry stock farmers to the poorer areas hence you cut your cloth to measure !

 

[GTB]

I don't think there's enough incentive to produce top grades. They clobber us for poor grades rather than pay extra for what they want.

 

[Tarw Coch]

So the markets are full of poor lambs, I'll have to take your word for that, but do Waitroae even attempt to buy good quality lambs in the market? Surely there must be some and if good lambs are in demand the price will go up at which point at least some of those selling poor lambs will think hmmm we need to produce some of these good lambs, there's money to be made there...........won't they?

 

[milkloss]

Perhaps people getting shot of unprofitable animals? Times aren't going to get easier and don't want any hangers-on,

 

[DB67]

Far too many sheep breeds.

There is a right mixture of cattle despite fewer breeds because folk cross over so many times.

 

[Moors Farmer]

Waitrose have a direct supply group. No idea what volume, though.

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

I know my head is now going in the lions mouth but every time I go to market which is most weeks, the place is full of poorly bred and badly finished stock( I don't know if the rush to farm as per NZ has anything to do with this) are we killing our own trade with our own attitudes? discuss, if anyone wants me I'm in the Anderson shelter.

There is market for everything at a price!
If everyone produced a 20kg R3L then they would be worth very little.

To get an education of what the market wants then visit some of the abattoirs here or in Europe that supply the ethnic market and specialist market.
You would be amazed at the poor conformation and lean carcasses that are required, similarly the ultra light lamb market.

What a catering butcher and what a retail butcher want are very different too.

The trick is to produce what you can sell at the best price for the lowest cost!

 

[gatepost]

I had just read the Waitrose statement on the NSA email, and thought maybe the message back from one of our customers that the product isn't good enough needs discussing, we all walk away from products which fail to come up to snuff wither its a breed of sheep or duff tractor.

 

[Tarw Coch]

I had just read the Waitrose statement on the NSA email, and thought maybe the message back from one of our customers that the product isn't good enough needs discussing, we all walk away from products which fail to come up to snuff wither its a breed of sheep or duff tractor.

Well I'm not a sheep farmer so I'm no expert on Waitroae lamb buying policy but as far as I'm aware they buy no lambs out of the market so what is in the market is irrelevant to Waitroae.
However I do know someone who sells lambs to Waitroae, they go direct to abattoir where they need to be to Waitroae spec to get a premium , in fact anyone supplying lambs who doesn't get above a certain percentage in spec is dropped. As with all direct contracts there will be a certain amount of paperwork/ hoops to jump through, I know they want fairly accurate predictions of what lambs you will be supplying and when, and lambs have to be booked in about a fortnight in advance. Picking fit lambs for market on the day is fairly straight forward compared to prediction numbers forward and having them ready on time.
In short it ain't that easy being a Waitroae supplier and if Waitroae don't like it there's nowt stopping them sending someone to the market to buy the best pens.

 

[Jackson4]

Not even hardly mentioned waitrose hmm ..let me see.. so UK texel breeder goes into mart (which probably had no nz texels in since Easyrams will only sell about 250/350? a year, not many considering the 30 million? lambs here) and even though hes looking at alot of badly finished hogs and lambs which are a whole host of breeds (the hogs will be more likely to be uk texels and beltex for the store selling farmer, and the spring lambs will mostly not be the OP's breed ) comes on here and relates all this negtive news to zealand genetics

The irony is that if you went into our supermarkets the shelves are flooded with well finished nz lamb and probably will be all year. Its the NZ lamb dominating our market that is pushing the price down. Does this not make you think about the quality and relative successes?

You have to wonder how many NZ ram breeders out sat there thinking... hmm i wonder if we should breed rams like in the uk ? with wide skeletons, big boney heads, legs that sit outside there bodies, we'll have to get plenty of staff to get them out.. what we got 4000 sheep, oh.. need the labour to feed all that creep and barley anyway .. 6000 lambs uwww thats gonna be a big order, well never mind. Start breeding for tight skins! .. what the wool cheque is massively down? oh dear never mind stick to the plan they look better before they get into the killing plant! dont bother about the feet and all that as long as we have enough labour we can sort that the question is can they get to that trough! and on and on

(extreme example i know but am partly humouring the slack jawed seemingly all related circle who must get my every TFF word on docier every morning judging by the sudden bullying i've been getting and some of the made up stuff about me going round has had my partner and i about wee ourselves with laughter with the pig ignorance of it dont end up being different in a rural area...

)

Anyway, i think your not very well finished lambs are just that, hogs have had a hard time this winter, alot of ewes have as well, and its what 2 weeks off May and rain was just turning to sleet/snow here when i was out last night, 0 degrees but a wind chill as well so colder, spring lambs have not had the sun on their backs, but really, did you see not very well finished lambs or are you just alluding to them not looking as good as yours? The spring lambs i saw sold last week made £120 and were well finished uk suffolks.

 

[MJT]

There's so many different breeds and so many different ideals that farmers have . Some grow their lambs as big as possible (60kg), some ship their lambs out small and early (35kg) some aim for the 40-42kg spec , some specialise in producing beltex type quality lambs,some are mule breeders and are shipping out their weather lambs , some have hill bred poorer conformed lambs etc etc. There's a market and a need for everything, for example majority of the true quality carcass lambs go for export .....So if everyone produced that sort of lamb it would greatly reduce the value of them. Just the same as if everyone produced 50kg lambs..... There would be too much of it to get rid of !!

 

[gatepost]

I'll come out of the shelter, I'm not having a go at NZ they do a good job with their marketing, most of my income comes from commercial lambs, I sold dead wt for 25yrs and had a market stall for 3, I am talking in a broad general way about us as an industry taking any notice of the messages coming back from the trade, I sell lambs all year round, there never is much problem with lambs coming off their mothers what ever the breed, maybe I didn't make my self clear more of an issue with the concept of costless production rather than actual genetics, people are buying NZ genetics because they work for them, which is exactly my point. if a customer stops buying whatever product, should the product manufacturer look at what they are doing. That is just as relevant to tup breeders in this country as it was to maker of the Morris Marina.

 

[Qman]

There are three reasons why many cattle are poor these days:- HOLSTEIN, HOLSTEIN AND HOLSTEIN.

They have caused the over supply of milk and ruined the beef. Good only for hat racks.

 

[easyram1]

I organised a Conference for the Suffolk Sheep Society in 2006 at which Richard Sadler, who had been Head of Meat Dairy and Poultry Products at Waitrose for many years spoke. He said and I quote verbatim from his paper "Seasonality is of course a problem and although I am sure that you believe that the Suffolk Breed ( like other breeders think their breed) produces tender lean and succulent lamb in December January February, I am sorry, I will have to disagree with you. The complaint level for tough, tainted, and "off flavoured meat" rises considerably from about December onwards, so this is the time of year that Waitrose uses Chilled New Zealand Lamb which I introduced in 1982"
Last autumn I heard Duncan Sinclair, the current Waitrose Agricultural manager saying exactly the same thing, emphasising the increase in complaints at the end of the UK season ( ie towards the end of the year ) and adding that the Waitrose dedicated lamb supply groups based in the South West of England and Wales had run out of lamb by the end of the year anyway because they had all been sold "in season" and not run on for stores. He did however indicate that they were looking at trying to find new suppliers from further north than their current suppliers and particularly Scotland who may be able to supply later season lamb BUT the total absolute driver for everything they did was the quality of the product and the consumers eating experience.
So my view is that what is in the Market currently - be it good or bad - will make no difference to Waitrose who are purely customer driven and who only buy direct from dedicated supply groups.

 

[GTB]

In my very limited experience of supplying lambs to waitrose many years ago I found them to be incredibly fussy. They promised a bonus for in spec lambs but it was very hard to get lambs in spec. Those that weren't in spec got clobbered and if you booked in fifty lambs but took 49 or 51 it was a hanging offence. We were taking lambs into dunbia at the same time and the difference in grading and killing out % was quite noticeable and believe it or not the dunbia lambs were regularly averaging a better price due to less being out of spec even though they were identical lambs. As always there are two sides to every story and waitrose can go and swivel if they say British lamb isn't good enough.

 

[Hilly]

There are three reasons why many cattle are poor these days:- HOLSTEIN, HOLSTEIN AND HOLSTEIN.

They have caused the over supply of milk and ruined the beef. Good only for hat racks.

Couldnt agree more, worst breed to ever touch our country, has dose alot of damage.

 

[spin cycle]

waitrose are taking the pee IMO.....hoggett tastes better and no reason to be tough.....i think that maybe some entire rams filter through and cause the complaints?....even so i had 11month old ram for freezer and customer thought it was lovely?

 

[gone up the hill]

Does Waitrose sell imported lamb?? if they do that is the reason they have made these comments and if they don't then it sounds like they are about to start doing so and are making these comments to justify either selling imported lamb or to start doing so!

 

[easyram1]

Does Waitrose sell imported lamb?? if they do that is the reason they have made these comments and if they don't then it sounds like they are about to start doing so and are making these comments to justify either selling imported lamb or to start doing so!

As my first quote said they have been selling chilled NZ lamb from Jan onwards since 1982.