butchering livestock

[EJB]

Hi Guys.

Next year we want to start raising some animals for market, not a lot of them at first, and we are hoping to get into selling the processed meat directly to area consumers on a small scale.

Question is, anybody have experience with butchering for hire? i.e. I have no expertise (and no desire) to butcher pigs, lambs and possibly cows and turkeys myself, so I would need to find someone to do it for me.

Any idea on how these arrangements work and where you'd go to find someone to do this? i.e. can anyone setup shop to do this or is there public-health/licensicing issues I need to be aware of? How about cost? any estimates? would it be typical to allow a butcher to keep a certain amount of the meat as payment?

Any and all info appreciated.

[beenthere]

Can't tell from where you are wanting to do this, but if in the US, I would first contact your State Dept. of Agriculture. They will be able to tell you what the rules and regs are. If you sell the meat, I suspect the USDA would have an inspector involved. We used to have a butcher come to the farm, kill the animal, leave a few of the organ parts, and take the rest to the shop where it would be cut up, packaged, and frozen for our consumption.

I hunt and butcher my own deer and find it pretty straight forward to do myself. However, one year while hunting, a neighbor farmer came by and asked if I and my partner wanted to butcher a cow that had gone down and had broken a leg. Well, long story short, we did and will never do it again. The meat was very difficult to cut compared to venison. It wasn't firm, which may be why beef is aged a bit before cutting it up. But I don't know that for sure.

[DUMBDOG]

Beef is aged so that the fat in the tissue will decompose a little and thus makes the meat more tender. As far as the firmness goes, it is a lot larger animal than a deer and it would appear to be less firm. A good meat saw will do wonders with buthering a beef.

As far as having them butchered and selling the meat, the process must be done in a federaly inspected plant.

I recently had purchased a buffalo and it was killed and butchered in a plant, the cost was $35.00 and they kept the hide. We than took it home and processed the quarters ourselves. It was interesting as when had only done venison and elk before.

To butcher for resale it is extremely regulated. Very difficult to get a license to do this. I can't even butcher a cow and sell it to someone. To sell the meat you have to undergo regular inspections, have alot of licenses, etc.

Now with that said what you can do is raise the beef and sell it on the hoof. You get so much per pound before butchering. Then it goes to the butcher, licensed shop, and the person you sold it to they pay the packer. This is legal but having it butchered and then selling it is a big no-no. That's why when you get your meat back from a butcher it's all marked not for resale.

[Argee]

I've done this with some success. As has been previously stated, there are some strict federal laws regarding marketing of beef cuts without the proper license. The way around that issue is to sell the beef by the side. You raise it, pre-sell the side of beef at whatever price you determine, then when slaughter day comes, take it to a slaughter and packing house with instructions as to which side of beef goes to whom. The recipients pay the slaughter house directly for the cut and wrapping of their side, your out of the picture.

[pbenven]

Exactly how the small farms operate around here, too.

I butcher my own deer and I butchered a steer once with my dad. It's a lot of work, but we kept almost everything - heart, liver, stomach (for my dad - not me, yeeckth), intestines for sausage casings, oxtail, tongue. It's rewarding work when you do it for yourself.

[EJB]

This is more or less along the lines I was thinking...pre-sell pigs, lambs and perhaps cows and turkeys and then have the processing done thru a packing house that deals with the customer...I figured actually selling the stuff directly would get complicated...thanks. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Argee]

The regulations are getting crazy. Some of our local meat packers have ceased doing custom beef because of the regulations. You now need a separate killing facility away from the processing plant. They either can't afford to put up the new buildings or are unwilling to go along with the newer regulations. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Used to be a separate room. They would put the cattle in a squeeze gate, kill, and hook it onto a conveyor system for gutting, skinning and into the cooler. The animal would not touch the floor once it was killed. I guess with the proliferation of ecoli, mad cow disease and the likes, the feds feel it's safer to have a separate killing building to contain these.

[MDSteve]

I think it would be best to contact a local butcher or chop shop. I get a side of beef and a hog every year. My local butcher has farms that he calls to get the cows, hogs, sheep or goat that a customer wants. He pays hoof weight and then does the butchering and sells the meat to the customer.

Steve