NEXT week's Muslim festival of Ramadan, starting on June 6, is providing some welcome relieve, albeit to be short-lived, for sheep producers, with old and new season lamb prices rallying at many centres over the past week.

While the cold spring has resulted in many new season lambs being slower to appear on the market than last year, prices are up 15p per live kg on 2015 values, according to Brian Ross, sheep auctioneer at Lawrie and Symington's Lanark mart.

"New season lambs are about a fortnight later coming to the market this year, but they averaged 206p per kg on Monday against 191p at the same sale last year, while the hogg trade remained similar."

However, he warned this welcome price rise is likely to be short-lived for the remainder of June until the Muslim festival comes to an end a month later, and the outcome of the EU Referendum is known.

"Everything is against us until we know the outcome of the referendum as there is so much uncertainty out there and with the euro falling. Currency and trade with the EU has a huge bearing on the UK sheep trade," he said.

Prime sheep values have also been holding up further north in Aberdeenshire, where last week Aberdeen and Northern Marts sold in excess of 800 hoggs through Thainstone Mart, to average 174p, which was up on the year.

Auctioneer, Colin Slessor, said: "We had a relatively good show of hoggs considering the time of year which sold to 197p for 49kg Texels from Cooperhill and £98.50 per head for 55kg Texels from Ardfork and 53kg Texels from Cooperhil.

"We also saw one man sell 98 Blackie wedder hoggs, 12 of which had their teeth up, to average £83.70, so we had a good sale."

Read the full trend on the current lamb price in this week's issue of The Scottish Farmer, out May 4