Sheep Milk

The traded lot is bulk raw ewe milk, pooled from a flock and held chilled until collection or on-farm processing. Compared with the bovine commodity, the scale is different in kind rather than degree: a collection may represent many animals over several milkings, and small farm volumes mean that a substantial share of sheep milk never enters a collection tanker at all but is made into cheese on the holding where it is produced.

Sheep milk is compositionally distinct from cow milk in ways that matter to processors, not only in the amount of fat and protein but in the casein fraction and the size distribution of the fat globules. These differences affect how the milk coagulates and how the resulting cheese behaves, which is why sheep-milk cheeses are their own product category rather than variants of cow-milk cheeses.

Dairy sheep have a comparatively short lactation and, in many production systems, a seasonally concentrated breeding pattern. The commercial consequence is a supply curve with a pronounced peak and a genuine trough, sometimes with no milk at all for part of the year. Processors respond by making cheeses that mature — storing value in a ripening room rather than in a milk tank — and by contracting supply well ahead of the season.

Seasonality also shapes composition. Milk drawn late in lactation differs from milk drawn early, so both the quantity and the character of the commodity move through the season. Buyers who need consistency work around this through blending, contract terms, and product choice rather than by expecting a uniform year-round input.

As with other dairy commodities, sheep milk is bought against compositional criteria — chiefly fat and protein, and often total solids — and against hygiene criteria covering microbiological condition, somatic cell measurements, temperature, and freedom from residues and inhibitory substances. Because cheese yield tracks solids so directly, compositional payment is the norm and the premium for richer milk is explicit rather than incidental.

Cheese dominates. Many of the best-known sheep-milk cheeses carry geographical designations that tie the product to a defined origin, and in some cases to defined breeds and production practices — which means the raw milk itself is bound by scheme rules before it ever reaches a vat. Yoghurt and other fermented products account for much of the remainder; fluid sheep milk for drinking is a marginal outlet, and some milk is frozen to smooth the seasonal gap for processors.

• Cheese — the principal destination, including many designation-protected cheeses
• Yoghurt and other fermented dairy products
• Frozen milk held to extend a short season
• Fluid drinking milk — a small, specialist outlet

Handling follows the same logic as any raw milk: cool promptly after milking, hold chilled, and keep the interval to processing short. Collection logistics are harder than in the bovine chain because volumes per farm are small and holdings are often dispersed, which raises the cost of every litre moved and further favours processing at or near the point of production.