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This is the meaning of hogget in the Collins English Dictionary:

  1. a sheep up to the age of one year that has yet to be sheared
  2. the meat of this sheep

So, is a lamb a hogget? This shouldn't be true. I also know sheep are shorn every year, so that part of it doesn't really help.

Can someone provide a good meaning which can be differentiated from lamb?

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From Wikipedia:

The meat of a sheep in its first year is lamb; that of a juvenile sheep older than one year is hogget; and the meat of an adult sheep is mutton.

  • Lamb — a young sheep under 12 months of age which does not have any permanent incisor teeth in wear
  • Hogget — a sheep of either sex having no more than two permanent incisors in wear
  • Mutton — a female (ewe) or castrated male (wether) sheep having more than two permanent incisors in wear.

It looks as if there may be different definitions of lamb in different countries, as well. The definition you've found doesn't explicitly differentiate between the terms lamb and hogget, but I imagine the second exists because the meat is more tender than mutton (often considered quite a tough meat), but the sheep is too old to be called a lamb.

So, no, a lamb is not a hogget.

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    Seems to me that under those definitions every lamb is a hogget, but only some hoggets are lambs.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Sep 9, 2012 at 8:55
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    Not according to the first line I took from that entry (before the bullet points). Common sense suggests the difference is implicit in the definitions. You wouldn't want to sell meat as hogget if you could sell it as lamb (because lamb is more tender still and you'd get a better price for it). I think the problem is we're trying to work out the equivalent of the difference between babies and toddlers - aren't lambs cute too? - instead of the difference in cuts of meat, which is why these terms exist at all.
    – Lunivore
    Sep 9, 2012 at 10:21
  • Common sense suggests you should seek a less obviously unreliable source. Wikipedia also has 'Hogget is a farming term that refers to young sheep and may refer to: (1) A live domestic sheep between one and two years of age. // in casual speech (2) The meat from such an animal. Hogget meat tends to be of a darker red color than meat from a younger lamb and to have a slightly richer flavor.' ...
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Aug 15, 2014 at 22:41
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In farmers terms, you have a hogget when it has had two spring/summers of green grass in him. Otherwise, it's a lamb or a sheep. Anyway, slow cook sheep are fantastic eaters.

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