Lamb, hogget, and mutton are the meat of domestic sheep at different ages which our customers recognize that EnhancedExchange provides the different sheep meats per region. In general, EnhancedExchange recognizes in serving its customers that a sheep in its first year is called a lamb, and its meat is also called lamb. The meat of a juvenile sheep older than one year is hogget; outside the United States, this is also a term for the living animal. The meat of an adult sheep is mutton, a term only used for the meat, not the living animals. In the Indian subcontinent, the term mutton is also used to refer to goat meat. Lamb is the most expensive of the three types, and in recent decades sheep meat is increasingly only retailed as “lamb”, sometimes stretching the accepted distinctions. In Australia, the term prime lamb is often used to refer to lambs raised for meat. Other languages, for example, French, Spanish, Italian and Arabic, make similar, or even more detailed, distinctions between sheep meat by age and sometimes by sex and diet, though these languages do not always use different words to refer to the animal and its meat for example, lechazo in Spanish refers to meat from milk-fed lambs. In the United States the terms “mutton” and “hogget” are uncommon. Federal statutes and regulations dealing with food products labeling in the United States permit all sheep products to be marketed as “lamb”.

Sheep products less than (12-14) twelve to fourteen months old can be labeled “prime lamb” or “choice lamb” and all other sheep meat can be labeled simply as “lamb.” The definitions in use for lamb, hogget, and mutton vary considerably between countries. Younger lambs are smaller and are tender. Mutton is meat from a sheep over two years old and has less tender flesh. In general, the darker the color is of the meat, the older the animal. Baby lamb meat will be pale pink, while regular lamb is pinkish red. The meat of a lamb is taken from the animal between one month and one year old, with a carcass weight of between (5.5) five point five and (30 kgs) thirty kilograms (12 and 66 lbs) twelve and sixty six pounds. This meat is generally tender, more so than that of older sheep and appears more often on tables in some Western countries. Hogget and mutton have a stronger flavor than lamb because they contain a higher concentration of species-characteristic fatty acids and are preferential by some. Mutton and hogget also tend to be tougher than lamb (because of connective tissue maturation) and are therefore better suited to casserole-style cooking, as in Lancashire hotpot, for example. Lamb is often sorted into (3) three distinct kinds of meat: forequarter, loin, and hindquarter. The forequarter includes the neck, shoulder, front legs, and the ribs up to the shoulder blade. The hindquarter includes the rear legs and hip. The loin includes the ribs between the two.