Butchering a cow
Contributors to this thread:Elk
From: Darrell
28-Apr-20
Anyone else having the crazy thought of buying and butchering a cow right now? With plants shutting down, I can't help but wonder if putting my elk processing skills to work on a cow wouldn't be a good thing. Guessing if I could find the right connection, I could get a good price. It would be the same process. (I learned to butcher elk from a cattle butcher.) I think the main thing holding me back besides finding the time to do it is the aging part as I don't have a walk in cooler.
From: x-man
28-Apr-20
Nothing wrong with aging beef but, it's not necessary.
I don't think you'll find too many deals on beef just yet. They don't mature nearly as quick as pork. Hogs will be the first and possibly only large slaughter animals to be killed and buried whole. Chickens mature very quick and I'm guessing will be killed and disposed of whole in mind-numbing numbers.
From: fubar racin
28-Apr-20
Starting to see some better deals on beef but as said not like pork.
From: t-roy
28-Apr-20
Even if you paid $100-$200 over what the packers are paying the producers, you’d still be getting a good price. The producers are taking it in the shorts right now. Considerably bigger critter to handle for sure, as well. You could check with a locker to see if they would be willing to kill, skin, and hang (age) it for you for a fee vs the entire butchering and packaging. A buddy of mine butchers 5-6 beef in 2 days each year. He takes his fats to the locker and they kill/hang and age them for him until he’s ready to butcher. He’s got a shop set up with all the saws, grinders, etc., just not the cooler. Works great for him. It’s a long couple of days, but with 6-10 family members helping, they get it done every year. Helps a lot if the locker isn’t a long ways away.
From: Glunt@work
28-Apr-20
Skip the cow, a heifer or steer will eat better :^)
From: Pop-r
28-Apr-20
I do it. Only problem I have is getting it to taste like what we're spoiled to. The meat you buy at retail is given a very specific diet that the American consumer has grown to love the flavor of. Without those commodities & secret recipe it's very difficult to replicate and one I haven't mastered yet.
From: Pop-r
28-Apr-20
& Ftr...I seriously doubt anything gets killed and buried whole.
From: pointingdogs
28-Apr-20
Pop, were are getting close. These finished pigs have to go somewhere.
From: elkmtngear
28-Apr-20
Got to do this one several years back, landowner had a "wild" bull calf running around, after he'd moved all his cattle off the Ranch. Rancher said I could have it. Took it as an opportunity to let my Wife kill her first "big game animal". We stalked it, and she managed to put it down.
She was fascinated by the breakdown process, being an RN. Some of the best meat I've ever had.
From: WapitiBob
28-Apr-20
no
From: altitude sick
28-Apr-20
Darrell, I’ll sell you a angus or Maine steer. Just like wild game you wouldn’t believe the difference in quality and taste. Buying directly. Come pick out your steer.
From: Brotsky
28-Apr-20
Pop-r, producers here are giving away live hogs...for FREE. Not too hard to figure out what the next step is.
From: Kurt
28-Apr-20
I remember listening to the ag markets while driving over from CO to Nebraska whitetail hunting many years back. Hogs were selling for $0.08/# that day. Thought about stopping in Ft Morgan at the livestock auction and buying one....hauling it to NE and butchering it. Since I was alone, only had the bow to kill it and just a topper on my pickup to haul it there alive, I didn't do it....but a 150# hog for $12 sounded like a hell of a buy. I would not have wanted to look the producer of the hog in the eye though for stealing his pig/money.
From: x-man
28-Apr-20
"& Ftr...I seriously doubt anything gets killed and buried whole."
It's going to happen. I have neighbors culling baby pigs as we speak.
When our family farm was still operational(dad is retired), cows had one calf a year. Sows had 2 litters of 10(average) per year. We sold the steers and market heifers at 2 years of age. The market pigs reached slaughter size at six months.
If you do the math, it's easy to see why the hogs are getting overpopulated FAST. That, an most large-scale hog producers stagger their breeding so they have pigs ready for slaughter once a month. They only have so much room to board and feed so as the next batch is weened, they need someplace to put them.
If you really want to help, and get some meat for the freezer, find a local hog farmer, offer to pay market value for a slaughter hog, take it home and butcher it yourself. You'll be saving money, and more importantly saving one pig from becoming fertilizer.
If the processing plants don't re-open by summer, then the beef market will begin to be affected as well.
From: Ucsdryder
28-Apr-20
Find the right rancher and you can steal a beef right now. They aren’t doing sh*t at the auction yard. You just need to decide if you’re ok with one coming off grass. If you want grocery store “quality” then it’ll need to be grain fed and finished with corn. That will add to the work and price.
From: Brotsky
28-Apr-20
Rob, sounds like they are planning to re-open our large pork processing plant here this week. That will be a huge weight off the shoulders of the guys selling there.
From: LINK
28-Apr-20
I’d go for it but there is a difference in grass fed free ranging steak and steak that’s fed a finishing ration in a pen. If you could I’d recommend feeding your steer for at least 45 days, 90 is better. For $3/day you’ll thank yourself for doing it. I take my steers to the local butcher but no reason you couldn’t do it yourself. I had a steak last night that I have about $4/lb in the animal, feed and processing. My steak beats anything you’ll get at a grocery store and most if not all steak houses.
From: JayZ
28-Apr-20
& Ftr...I seriously doubt anything gets killed and buried whole.
It's already happening.
From: altitude sick
28-Apr-20
Our Local slaughter houses can’t keep up.
It’s a 30 Day wait to get a steer processed. I just sold a steer to two families
Total on the beef processing and wrapping was $2197
There are good deals at the stockyards right now.
From: midwest
28-Apr-20
Good deal, Justin.
From: KsRancher
28-Apr-20
I think if you're someone goes to sale barn and buys a beef and go straight to butcher with it that they will be sadly disappointed in the taste. Unless they have a little inside knowledge on the calf and know it was corn fed for a while. Huge difference in a grass fed beef and one being fed corn. We have a neighbor that raises grass fed be for sale. My wife trying to be nice bought some from them a while back. Stunk up the whole Dang house when we cooked it. Some people really like grass fed beef, but I am not on that list. The last one we butchered was on feed for a 180 days. Pretty hard to beat that steak. I would love to buy a couple of pigs right now and butcher. But there is no one remotely close to us that raises fat hogs anymore.
From: cnelk
28-Apr-20
I bet your going to see a bunch of 'feral' hogs running around in the midwest before too long
From: Pop-r
28-Apr-20
It's not just corn that does the flavoring either. I've tried that. It's a combination of that, alfalfa & other things that "finish" one like we like it.
From: Quinn @work
28-Apr-20
I can buy a whole processed and packaged hog right now for $1/pound. Too bad my freezer's still almost full of elk and deer.
From: t-roy
28-Apr-20
KsRancher........I can hook you up pretty easily. I’ll swap you 2 market ready hogs for an #800 feeder steer, even up! ;-)
I’ll bet I can rig up a spot to finish him out!
From: KsRancher
28-Apr-20
Will you throw in complimentary bag of little gray morels?
From: JohnMC
28-Apr-20
Quinn is that in CO?
From: altitude sick
28-Apr-20
KsRancher, It’s pretty common for people to say to us, they have never had beef so good.
They buy meat at Walmart and think, Hey it says Angus so it must be good.
From: t-roy
28-Apr-20
That’s a deal!!!......for ONE of us! ;-)
From: x-man
28-Apr-20
I don't even have room for a frozen pizza in my chest freezer. We have four deer, three turkeys, several ducks, geese, and fish. Otherwise I'd be doing a hog right now. If I can locate freezer space soon, I'll buy a hog anyway, just to help the neighbors out.
I would also ask that any and all reading this, please PAY for hogs, even if they are offered free. I would be ashamed to receive a live 250 lb+ hog for less than $100
From: fubar racin
28-Apr-20
Kurt you’d have had a rough time trying to buy a hog in Morgan the livestock exchanges are in brush lol. I bought my last hog at the market on the hill for 16 cents a pound a few months back. It was a ruptured boar no one wanted I don’t give a rip about a rupture to put a bullet in his head an hour later.
From: Darrell
28-Apr-20
If it were winter, I'd be more serious about it. However, I would love to visit with Link and others who have had good luck fattening their own calves. My mom still owns a property in Alb where it saves her 2K a year in taxes to have the renter graze a couple calves on a pasture due to it being taxed as "agricultural." So we recently put two 500# calves on it. Need to decide if we are just going to sell them or try to finish them ourselves. My dad finished a couple many years ago and they were all but unedible. He fed them corn for 90 days and we have always wondered if he actually got his beef back or something else. Have also wondered if they weren't killed cleanly.
From: Kurt
28-Apr-20
Yup, I guess it was Brush, where ever the daily livestock market report originated from...I haven't lived in CO in over a decade and the low priced hogs were way back, I'm guessing over 30 yrs ago as I quit hunting SW NE for deer around that time.
From: buckhammer
28-Apr-20
There are farmers in the midwest states that are giving pigs away.
There was a gentleman on AgTalk forum this weekend that farms in Illinois and he was giving away 20 hogs per person. Just bring a trailer and they are yours.
The large corporate pig farms in the midwest held a conference call this past Sunday to discuss a humane way to kill their hogs for bury in large pits. They stated that there are 3 million pigs ready for slaughter in the next 2 weeks and there is no place to send them for processing. I seen pictures of a couple farms in Nebraska that had Hydra- hoes parked on the farm ready to did pits and trenches for the dead pigs
From: GF
28-Apr-20
Who is going to volunteer to eat the meat that’s coming out of a potentially tainted packing plant?
From: Ben
28-Apr-20
I fatten a steer every year or so depending how much we give to the kids. I have a feed mix I have done at our local elevator and feed for 70-80 days. Our beef is always top notch. Our neighbor raises pigs and they are selling more to individuals than ever before. Best of all is when he has one break a leg I get a call asking if I would like it. The last one was a 400# sow, makes you appreciate a front end loader on the tractor!
From: Norseman
28-Apr-20
Got a nice fat Heifer going in on Thursday.
From: Quinn @work
28-Apr-20
JohnMC- South Dakota
From: fubar racin
28-Apr-20
Iv spent enough time in our local packing plant to know that I’d prefer not to eat meat from them before covid but covid doesn’t make me any more leery of it either.
From: WV Mountaineer
28-Apr-20
Since research has shown very little heat kills the heck out of it, I wouldn't hesitate to eat meat coming from and producing plant. Add humidity and 80 degree surface temperature, its dead in less then 1.5 minutes on plastic. So, i imagine a grill or frying pan is a great way to kill it. But, I'm dumb because I don't believe humans cause climate change too. So, take that with a grain of salt.
From: 4nolz@work
28-Apr-20
PigDoc how are they putting them down?
From: Norseman
28-Apr-20
Send me all the bacon and chops you want from any Covid + packing plant.
From: KsRancher
28-Apr-20
Just read a article that talked about JBS starting to kill hogs and then dispose of or render them. It said it would be easier to kill them them and dispose of them all at central locations. It said 160,000 hogs a day in the US will be killed and not processed. I am not sure if its actually going to happen, but if so. That's hard to swallow. It wouldn't bother me at all to eat the meat from a Covid infected plant
From: RK
28-Apr-20
Might be better and more responsible to report on what's happened not what might happen
Remember we should all be. Dead from the last ice age that did not happen.
Speculation serves no positive purpose
From: Fuzzy
29-Apr-20
I have been using my down-time building a skinning/butchering/canning shed on the property (starting with standing trees) I'm almost done and can send plans (free) to anyone who is interested.
From: Fuzzy
29-Apr-20
Pig-Doc, there's no use trying to throw facts at people who already "know" things.
From: Fuzzy
29-Apr-20
the butcher-shed plans are an EasyCAd file so I can email them if you have a compatible program. Otherwise I'll mail them to anyone interested.
From: pointingdogs
29-Apr-20
"Who is going to volunteer to eat the meat that’s coming out of a potentially tainted packing plant?"
Me. Zero evidence that COVID is transmitted through meat from an inspected packing plant. XXXXX2
Last time I heard this virus was very sensitive to heat. Imagine what a grill would do to that virus. Secondly, have you ever seen the work gear that these employees must wear at the plants. This aint no backyard operation. PIGDOC, I'm a DVM in northeast Iowa. Where you located????
From: 4nolz@work
29-Apr-20
Yeah I'm a Vet I know about captive bolt seems way labor intensive.A classmate at USDA told of depopulating 100,000 chickens with wood chippers...last meeting I went to they talked of filling poultry houses with firefighting foam like at airports and it basically smothered them.
From: 4nolz@work
29-Apr-20
Woodchippers was 80s.....
From: 4nolz@work
29-Apr-20
The closings are work force related and now liability issues unrelated to concerns of "tainted meat"
From: Ben
29-Apr-20
I considered butchering a steer myself several years ago, I weighed the fact that even though I had access to 3 freezers I didn't have a walk -in cooler. I was afraid that a 1200# steer without adequate cool down facilities might bone sour if not cooled down quick enough. Probably why our ancestors slaughtered in the winter. I'd hate to waste a good beef that way.
From: Newhunter1
29-Apr-20
I'm going this weekend to a hog farm north of springfield, IL to get two hogs at .50 a pound. 300.00 for 600lbs of live weight.
From: Surfbow
30-Apr-20
"Who is going to volunteer to eat the meat that’s coming out of a potentially tainted packing plant?"
Seriously? It's constipated thinking like this that got us into this stupid frenzy in the first place...
From: Fuzzy
30-Apr-20
Ben, the rule when I was growing up was to "kill" between Thanksgiving and Christmas ...in the Western Piedmont of Virginia this meant temps at night just below freezing and daytime temps rarely over mid 50's with an average daily temp around 40 meat cooled out well but didn't freeze and pork would "take" salt and cure properly.
From: Bake
30-Apr-20
A friend just bought 22 cull gilts for $10 a piece. Most around 100 lbs right now. He tried to give more, but they wouldn't take it. Said they'd only get $.07 a lb anyways. They all had either eye problems or small abdominal ruptures/hernias. I don't think they're destroying excess around here yet, but they sure aren't worth much. . . .
From: midwest
30-Apr-20
Fuzzy, you have any pics? Would love to see your operation.
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
pics coming up
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
I apologize for any duplicates
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
I'll try to get some more recent ones and some interior ones, we just cleaned up the site yesterday and completed "the chicken house annex" and "the bunny barn"..... there's also a 5'x8' quail/pheasant hutch that was part of the project.
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
the lean-to off the side witll be generator, air compressor, lawn mower and rototiller storage. The bare ground in back of the animal sheds/hutches and chicken run is a 1/3 acre vegetable garden. The woods in the background (and the garden area) is where the lumber (except the treated 4x6" and 4x4" "poles") came from. Mostly hemlock with some white pine and chestnut oak. We had two large hemlock trees (28" DBHand 26" DBH respectively) that were almost dead from the wooly adelgid . Great lumber for this type of project!
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
the electric hoist and the three burner propane cook top came in last week. I have the 125 Amp box mounted and the power service (10/3 w ground direct burial) line run, haven't hooked up yet. We will have a 50 amp 220 volt circuit, a 20 amp lighting circuit, a 20 amp receptable circuit, a 20 amp dedicated hoist circuit a 100 pound propane tank, well water and a center floor drain, triple basin utility and ware wash sink, stainless steel work table, 200 volt commercial oven. No bathroom since it's close to the house (and the woods, lol)
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
my home made cabinet smoker is going inside, and two large chest freezers, a fridge and eventually an upright freezer
From: Ben
04-May-20
Wow Fuzzy, I'm impressed with the structural strength of that building. It should hold one heck of a snow load. Good work!
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
Ben, I sure hope so. I'm prone to "over build" but in my area we sometimes have snow measured in feet. In the last 20 years (1993 and 1996) we've had two events that dumped over three feet...the winter of 2009/2010 we had two months where the snow never melted off and in some places was over 18" compacted.... most winters we don't see over 8" at one time but "most" doesn't cut it. I'm only building this thing once
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
my new neighbor has a skid-steer loader, I have tree-felling skills... we traded some work... I think I got the best of that bargain
From: t-roy
04-May-20
Good stuff, fuzzy! I’ll bet your neighbor thinks he got a good deal as well. I wouldn’t want to live in the “chicken house annex”. Just when you start to get to know your neighbors........they disappear!
From: midwest
04-May-20
Damn impressive, Fuzzy!
From: Fuzzy
04-May-20
thanks guys
From: Beav
04-May-20
Looks great!!
From: Fuzzy
05-May-20
we put in three rows of green peas yesterday (200 foot rows) and four rows of potatoes (50 pounds of seed potatoes) too wet today but we have another 100 pounds of seed potatoes to go and the sweet corn, beets, green beans, turnips, parsnips, pumpkins, winter squash, tomatillo, carrots, indian corn and various greens (for food and rabbit feed). The other plants (melons, summer squash, zucchini, okra, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, etc) are already started indoors and ready to go in after this weekend's freeze.
From: Fuzzy
05-May-20
I left out, two rows of onions as well.... we are planning to put up a LOT of food this summer and fall and have a little to sell as well
