Sheep Price

🐑 How sheep are priced in India

The band above is what sellers asked when they posted, and it runs wide because a weaned lamb and a grown breeding ram are very different animals. In India sheep are mostly a meat market — wool here is coarse carpet-grade and rarely the reason for the price — so read the band knowing you are usually looking at meat weight.

What moves the price

• Weight and age. Meat sheep are priced on live body weight, and the rate firms up ahead of festival demand. A lamb is cheap; a well-grown wether or ram at slaughter weight sits at the top of the everyday range.
• Purpose. A ewe kept for breeding, a proven ram, and a wether raised for meat are three different buys. A sound ram of a named breed, able to pass on size and growth, is priced well above a meat animal of the same weight.
• Breed. A recognised meat breed — Nellore, Madras Red, Mandya — sits above a nondescript local flock sheep, and animals from a known meat strain grow faster, which buyers pay for.
• Health. Clean feet with no foot rot (sheep are prone to it), no cough, clear eyes and nose, and no scouring. Age is read off the teeth, and worm burden shows in pale gums and inner eyelids — the same trap that catches goat buyers.

The breeds you will actually see

The Nellore of Andhra Pradesh is a tall hair sheep — almost no wool — and one of the country's premier meat breeds. The Madras Red of Tamil Nadu is a reddish-brown meat sheep, and the compact Mandya (or Bandur) of Karnataka is prized enough for its meat to fetch a name premium. Across the Deccan you will meet the dual coarse-wool-and-meat Deccani; in the arid west the hardy Marwari, and the Chokla and Magra of Rajasthan, which carry the better carpet wool. Most of what is listed, though, is bought to be fattened and sold on for meat.

Before you pay

• See the sheep weighed, or weigh it yourself — you are buying by weight, and eyeballing a woolly animal is how you overpay.
• Part the wool and feel the body condition, check the feet for rot and limping, and pull down an eyelid to look for the pallor of a heavy worm burden.
• Read the teeth for age; on a ram check both testicles, on a ewe the udder and whether she is in lamb.
• Ask about vaccination — PPR, sheep pox and FMD — and recent deworming, and never send the full amount in advance for an animal you have not stood next to.

Sheep prices climb with festival season and turn on weight, health and breed. Use the band at the top of this page as your starting point, then judge each listing on the animal in front of you.