Do lambs have a good life before slaughter?

The objection

“Sheep have the best deal in farming. They’re out in the fields, free, in the fresh air. What’s the harm in lamb?”

The answer

The field is real, and a hillside is a different world from a windowless broiler shed. What it rarely gives a lamb is time. About 704 million sheep and lambs were killed for meat worldwide in 2024, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization: nearly 200 million in China, about 38 million in Australia, 22 million in New Zealand and nearly 13 million in the UK [1].

How old are lambs when they are slaughtered?

Most lambs are slaughtered before they are a year old, and in the UK most before they are six months old. The animal-welfare charity RSPCA says most UK lambs are slaughtered between 10 weeks and six months of age, though some may be 14 months old [2], and the UK magazine Countryfile (2026) says lambs bred for meat do not usually reach their first birthday [3].

How long do sheep live?

A sheep can live about 10 to 12 years, according to Countryfile (2026), so a lamb killed at six months has had a twentieth of that span or less [3]. The ewes kept back for breeding rarely reach old age either: a ewe’s life on the farm lasts about as long as she can produce lambs and pay her way, which is often five or six years, about half the natural span [3].

Is a lamb’s life in the field a good one?

A lamb’s life in the field is harder than it looks, with painful procedures early on and a high death rate before weaning. Male lambs are often castrated and young lambs often have their tails docked, and in the UK the RSPCA says both procedures are painful and are generally carried out at an early age without pain relief [2]. In England, the Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) Regulations 2007 allow a rubber ring, which constricts the blood flow to the scrotum or tail, only in a lamb’s first seven days and with no anaesthetic required, while castration by any other method needs an anaesthetic only once the lamb is three months old [4]. In Queensland, Australia, the state’s mandatory sheep code requires pain relief for docking or castration only in sheep more than six months old [5].

Kleemann and colleagues (2026) pooled 112 flock records from 58 papers, which covered fewer than 5% of the world’s sheep breeds and over-represented Australia, New Zealand and the US, and found that about 81% of lambs born survived to weaning, so roughly one in five died before then [6]. European flocks lost fewer, with about 87% surviving [6]. Across all the records, survival fell as litter size rose, yet litter size did more than ewe fertility or lamb survival to raise the number of lambs a flock weaned [6]. A 2020 review found that the share of lambs dying before weaning had held at 15 to 20% for four decades despite advances in genetics, nutrition and management [7], and in Australia a 2021 systematic review and economic model estimated that difficult births alone account for about 7.7 million lamb deaths a year [8].