Hey...I don't Have Midget Sheep?

Jonathan Shively said:

Good sized lamb there Travis!!!!
The angus folks don't like to admit that jersey meat won the taste test more than a couple years running! But that mutton and less marbled meat can be quite delicious and very tender if allowed to hang below 40 and above 32. Don't remember the exact formula now for days per inch of meat, but what happens at that temp is the muscle naturally breaks down without doing negative things like molding the meat. (all mold isn't bad either!). Good pic Travis, thanks for sharing, used to have a ewe for our petting zoo and would raise lambs off of her yearly. All of our trees and yard area used to have circles mowed in them from staking her out!!!

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I don't think there is any place for discussion between which is best, beef or lamb/mutton.
They are different meats. I like both. It's an apple and oranges thing. Also, mutton is very different than young lamb. Some folks don't like. Some cultures won't eat anything else. I like mutton on rare occasion for something different.

Frank I wasn't comparing taste of beef to mutton, I was comparing the taste of angus to jersey (both are breeds of cattle, one specifically for beef the other for dairy). Threw in the part about mutton as it coincided with the discussion of breaking down the muscle within the cut of meat naturally by hanging as it doesn't matter if it is mutton, beef, equine, porcine, deer, snake or bear.
I like lamb and mutton if prepared correctly and either served HOT or COLD, in between it is terrible! Wouldn't want it everyday (hey that could be a new diet) but love it out of my dutch ovens or from the spit!

I would rather eat my greasy ole nasty leather boot then eat one ounce of highland cow. I have never tasted anything as nasty as that in my entire life, and I have eaten many a dairy cow that was well past its prime. A healthy animal is a tasty animal...ordinarily anyway. Its an easy cow for homesteaders to raise because it grazes on brush rather then grass, but sorry Frank...it was offal (pun intended).

As for the Angus Jonathan, I won't disagree with you. Black Angus is all hype in my opinion. I'll give them credit for good marketing, but I'll take Jersey ANYDAY. Holstein would be a close second. Angus did serve a purpose here though; a Jersey/Angus cross for a dairy cow. Some heifers would milk 120 pounds a day.

Thanks for the high compliments on my lamb.The Mom did all the work, but as you can see with that chiseled face, Montadale's are known for their ease of lambing. It is actually one of the reasons I chose the breed.

We always hung beef in the cooler for 12 days, but I am not sure what lamb/mutton is supposed to be. I have heard of a method called Tender Stretch in books, but when you talk to butchers around here, they think you are talking about the local Yoga class.

Not a whole lot of slaughterhouses deal with lambs here, but the few that do seem to know what they are doing.

This is kind of off topic on an off-topic topic, but I recently wrote my first article on raising sheep. It's nothing fancy, but when I saw Google has their version of Wikipedia up and running now, I figured some sheep raising information would be good. Google calls it Knols, or a Unit of Knowledge. You can read about it here.

http://knol.google.com/k/travis-johnson/probiotics-within-the-flock/3igo6fap3ewj7/1?path_author=travis-johnson#view

Jonathan Shively said:

Frank I wasn't comparing taste of beef to mutton, I was comparing the taste of angus to jersey (both are breeds of cattle, one specifically for beef the other for dairy). Threw in the part about mutton as it coincided with the discussion of breaking down the muscle within the cut of meat naturally by hanging as it doesn't matter if it is mutton, beef, equine, porcine, deer, snake or bear.
I like lamb and mutton if prepared correctly and either served HOT or COLD, in between it is terrible! Wouldn't want it everyday (hey that could be a new diet) but love it out of my dutch ovens or from the spit!

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OK, gotcha.
Thanks for the lesson on cattle. After 25 years of raising the critters, ye woulda thunk I woulda larnt sumptin'.
BTW, for beef, I don't think properly fed Maine-Anjou can be beat for flavor.