Australian's love their lamb, be it roasts, chops or shanks, but surprisingly few know what exactly constitutes lamb when it comes to the meat they buy.
Currently in Australia and New Zealand a lamb is defined as a young sheep, up to about 12 months of age, with no permanent incisor teeth "in wear", meaning they are equal in size or larger than the surrounding milk teeth. Previously in Australia, a lamb was deemed no longer a lamb as soon as it had cut its first adult tooth and so were usually much younger than the current definition. This definition was recently changed to fall in line with our nearest lamb trade competitor, New Zealand.
Once they have permanent teeth in wear, sheep are referred to as mutton however, in the period between approximately 13 and 24 months old, while the sheep has no more than two permanent teeth in wear, they are referred to in the industry as hogget, or colloquially as 2-tooth. From a meat perspective, compared to lambs, hogget's are larger, fuller flavoured, with more fat, but almost as tender as lamb. Lamb meat by comparison, particularly young lamb, will be more delicate in flavour with minimal fat coverage. Given the size of some commercially available meat cuts, there is a high likelihood that some lamb on the shelf is actually young hogget. Many people prefer the fuller flavour and texture of hogget to lamb.
Our past meat pack sales have usually been with lambs between 9 and 11 months old and have proved to have superior flavour and tenderness compared to supermarket lamb which we attribute to how we raise our sheep.
Our 2023 meat pack offering however will not be lamb but will in fact be 2-tooth from our sheep born in July 2022. We decided to leave our sheep later to increase the size and flavour to offer our customers a better value product.
