Let's talk home butchering

[Awnry Abe]

I just took a lamb to a custom processor today. They charge a $75 flat fee. As far as beef is concerned, they do a great job. I don't have a serious bone to pick with the price. I think it is a good value--provided I get the retail cuts I am expecting. They only do 6-8 per year, so I have my reservations.

What really got my goat, though, was that the whole process went against my grain on my philosophical world view. The animal was stressed. It was a 57 minute ride in a wire dog kennel in the bed of my pickup. He was queued up in a holding area with other stressed animals. I much prefer a chance to eat a pail of grain in the backyard followed by sudden silence.

While dropping the animal off, I casually said to the owner, "I would gladly do this myself if I wouldn't make a total waste of him. I really want clean chops."

He said, "Sutherlands sells a saw with an attached meat grinder." I really do understand that these what we call "one-offs" and are more of nuisance to him. I would like to find out if anyone does this sort of thing at home. I checked on-line. Sure enough, they cost a mere $650. Small price to pay for treating the animal the way I want.

I have a few things going for me.
1) I have no issue with dispatching an animal. Even a named one.
2) A growing herd of goats and sheep.
3) an eclectic palette.

What I lack are the hard, physical assets. I am really curious about home processing done right. I've de-boned scores of animals. However, those bones have flavor. I really want to know if home butchering--and retaining the bone in the cut--is attainable at home. I also want to know if there are other infrastructure considerations. (I know, for example, that butchering a steer in May is out of the question for me.) We manhandle about 100 fryers a year, so I have a few tools already.

I welcome any comments on the topic.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Yes. I've done a calf, a pig, and several goats.

You have to learn to do the cuts, and I'm not great at that part, but it's all meat. You're going to chew it up anyway.

I have a good friend with a "butcher house." One corner is an insulated walk in cooler. The chillers are 220 volt AC units. Hooks hanging from metal rods to hang the meat on.

He has big tables in the middle. Large double sink and counter on one side of the room. Stove in one corner.

Big meat saw like you see at butcher shops. Meat grinder for hamburger. Sausage stuffer. Several nice knives. Big grey food grade plastic rectangular containers for the meat as you cut it. Commercial butcher paper holder/cutter.

[SJSFarm]

I'm with you! I've been stressing about raising another calf because here in ny they don't have 'kill trucks'. In CA and OR, when you needed to butcher, you called the kill truck and they came and downed the animal, bled, gutted and removed the head and hide, then took it to the butcher. NO stress !

The slaughterhouse I'm looking at using wil transport the animal for me and butchers the following morning so the animal has a chance to settle down and the adrenalin is not so high.

Is still prefer it the other way, but NY has restrictive laws.

I'm with you, I can't think of a more peaceful way- a bucket of grain, and then nothing! That's the way to treat an animal with respect.

[highlands]

Prior to training as a butcher (18 month apprenticeship just in pork) I butchered simply by completely deboning. Bones went in the bone pot to make stock. Meat went in the soup pot or in the freezer. This was very easy to do with a knife and it is fast.

[cshire]

www.farmsteadmeatsmith.com

Awesome home kill, butcher and sausage videos. All the videos I have seen are of pigs, but their website says they also handle lamb.

I would love to take one of their classes if they weren't 2400 miles from home.

[KIT.S]

I have a good friend with a "butcher house."

Aww, I'm jealous. We have a crouch-in cooler that will hold 2 beef in a pinch and my son set up a chain hoist in the shop, but the rest would be really nice. I've butchered beef, many pigs, sheep, deer and fowl and figuring out the cuts just takes some looking at pictures and practice. You already know what a pork chop should look like - once you figure out where it should come from, you'll know it when you've cut it correctly. And, as others have said, it's all meat, even if you can't name the cut.

I have a Northern Tool meat band saw with a grinder, a grinder on my KitchenAid mixer, and I splurged on a good sausage stuffer. My DS built me a barrel chicken plucker. Generally, folks can't tell my cuts from commercial any more, but again, it's practice. Of course, now that I have the equipment I can't pass the job off to a commercial butcher, but I'm too cheap to pay them for something I can do anyway.

Oh, all the equipment came off CL for very inexpensively compared to new, and works great. Keep looking!

Kit

[bluefish]

Well, we did a cow last year with nothing but kitchen knives, a sawsall (for quartering) and pos, cheapy bone saw we usually carry for hunting. Laid the quarters out, one at a time, on the kitchen table with several cut vids up on youtube on the laptop. My hands hurt just thinking about it.

We also do all our deer, but I just debone everything there as we live in a CWD district.

[Vickie44]

Originally Posted by thermopkt

Well, we did a cow last year with nothing but kitchen knives, a sawsall (for quartering) and pos, cheapy bone saw we usually carry for hunting. Laid the quarters out, one at a time, on the kitchen table with

We did the same , a bit of a hacker job but worthwhile and a great experience!

[eruehr]

It's dead simple to do the second one! First one can be a little nerve wracking. We do 12 - 15 pigs a year, the odd calf and however many sheep we can find. I use a 6" kitchen knife and a nice hand-held meat saw (I splurged and got a good one - the cheap ones will literally keep falling apart...). Oh, and a 3" Wüsthoff paring knife which I use for almost everything - much more than the 6"....I have a plywood table I put on sawhorses in the garage - really, the only extra thing you're likely to need is a $50 saw and a grinder.

First pig took several hours with a book in one hand and knife in the other. It gets faster pretty quick. Sheep and goats are even easier - no shooting, small pieces - no problem.

We save about $2000 a year with all the butchering we do. And the bacon and sausage are infinitely better! And - you can do it your way. My brother, cousins and friends who buy pigs all come over and we make a two day work party out of it - killing/skinning/massive liver and onion lunch on day one and cut/wrap on day two!

Last time I sold some finished pigs to someone I dropped them off at a very well respected custom place on a Saturday, I later found out they didn't kill them till Tuesday. Last time I'll do that - I think the less-stress (almost no stress) is worth it in and of itself.

[simi-steading]

You can always pick up an old bandsaw from a yard sale or from craigslist or similar.. Clean it up well with a pressure washer, then oil everything using mineral oil.. It's what I use for making bone in cuts of meat.. I pick up pork butts on sale cheap, give them a light freeze then slice them into pork steaks on the bandsaw..

[TnAndy]

I tried every processor in the area, and finally started doing my own at home. The reasons are like some of the above:

--The stress of taking it there, and mixing in with other animals

--Cleanliness was a real issue at some of them ( Guy smoking a cigarette, and God only knows when the last time he washed his hands kinda thing.....)

--You wonder if you got YOUR animal back, and IF you got all of it

--They got paid by hanging weight, so what went in your box and what went in the scrap barrel means little to them

--By the time you pay the kill, cut and wrap fee, you can often have 75cents/pound more in your 'take home' amount. That starts to make home grown more expensive than store bought by the time you add in all your other costs to raise it.

--Doing your own is simply a very good skill to develop


SO, I finally broke down and built a meat cutting room on the back of my garage, complete with a 6'x6' walk-in cooler run by a window AC. Mounted 4 large eye bolts in the cooler ceiling so I can hang 4 beef quarters, or 2 hogs split in half. Tiled the room floor with a center drain, tiled the walls up 4', and I can hose the whole thing down when done. Bought a stainless table to cut on.

Tools: Bought a decent set of butcher grade knives, couple of hand meat saws ( large one and small one ), and a 2hp Weston grinder for sausage and hamburger. Weston 2300 vacuum sealer to package everything up.

This year, I added a Rikon (Northern Tool $500 on sale) bandsaw with a sliding stainless table. Decent saw for light use. Has a grinder attachment, but never used it as the Weston is such a workhorse.

[HuskyBoris]

I have a guy that comes out to the farm with a hoist trailer and processing equipment,he dispatches and processes it right there and takes it over to a menonite processing place we use,,I have been very happy with all the results even when I had a rowdy steer that got loose and ran around,I was getting PO'd,he calmed me down and we waited awhile for him to calm back down before dispatch.I really like both of them and do not plan any changes.
we do process our own venison and birds though.

[calliemoonbeam]

I haven't done any butchering yet (unless you count helping my grandma with chickens as a kid, lol), but hope to in the future. I appreciate any information on the subject and save posts like these in a Word file.

Andy, you know I love all your self-built projects. I'd love to see pics of your meat cutting room, if you don't mind sharing. Of course, if you don't want to post them, I understand, but your work is always exceptional!

[Skamp]

Volume has it's benefits. To clean, butcher, then clean an "odd" animal has a price. The butcher, if playing by the rules, has to live as such.

You should too, if you are home butchering. Ever cleaned a saw? Ever cleaned a grinder? Do that multiple times a day, and justify it.

A 22, a tractor bucket, a hand saw, and preferably an electric grinder (hand crank in a pinch), will do. The pressure cooker is in constant rotation. Liver and/or heart is for dinner. Render some fat, collect some sinew. Bone in? Bone out? Ox tail soup? Yes I speak the name, in honor, at mealtime.

[doingitmyself]

I butcher all my deer, chickens, wild duck, rabbit, and pheasant myself. As to the dispatching of said animals, most are taken by archery or shotgun so i can't speak to the kill issue. I shoot to kill quickly, cleanly and that's all I really can do. Chickens well, they are chickens and their necks get rung, its just what you do.

I highly recommend you learn to butcher yourself, its nice to get the cuts your want and plus there is no concern of getting someone else's poorly handled carcass. If you have a like minded and trustworthy friend or neighbor perhaps you can arrange a sharing of equipment and even a dedicated small out building to do the work in. Its a nice way enjoy the harvest with friends and family.

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by calliemoonbeam

I haven't done any butchering yet (unless you count helping my grandma with chickens as a kid, lol), but hope to in the future. I appreciate any information on the subject and save posts like these in a Word file.

Andy, you know I love all your self-built projects. I'd love to see pics of your meat cutting room, if you don't mind sharing. Of course, if you don't want to post them, I understand, but your work is always exceptional!

Callie,

Thanks, as always. Here's the pics:

Sawed a hole in the back wall of the garage. Cut garage floor to tie in drains. Laid a flue for a wood cook stove at the same time.



Outside view of slab prep. I'd built a deck around the house already in anticipation of adding this 12x22' room.




Slab poured, walls framed out of home grown 2x6's. Far back wall, laid block up 4' because the bank behind it will fill couple feet up on the wall. The window looking hole in the framing is for the window AC for the walk-in cooler to come.



Framed a gable roof and tied into the existing garage roof.




Walk-in cooler framed in, and door set in place. Found the door on Craig's List....made building the cooler a breeze. Also set a small electrical sub-panel on the left side wall. Area to the right of the cooler is for a walk-in pantry.




Finished room, left side. Cooler, pantry doors. Wood stove set in place.




Right side of the room is cabinets. Commercial two compartment sink (another CL find), 30 gallon water heater, with a hose attached I can drag all over the room and hose the place down. Dishwasher that came out of other kitchen when we did the remodel of it. Etc. Didn't have the doors/drawer done at this pic, but do now.



Walk in pantry:




Hogs hanging in cooler.

[calliemoonbeam]

Thanks so much Andy! Just as great as I knew it would be and an excellent example. (adding to my Word file, lol)

Skamp, that's one of the reasons I want to learn to butcher myself, so there's not so much waste, as well as knowing for sure it's my own humanely raised animal and knowing how it's handled during processing.

I also love organ meats including liver, gizzard, heart and kidneys, and I love oxtail soup! (though I don't expect to be butchering beef). I lean towards and would love to live by the nose to tail philosophy and am willing to put in the effort to go along with that.

P.S. Welcome to HT!

[Awnry Abe]

@TnAndy: Wholly Malolly! Talk about inspiration! I have an earth contact house on premise that is going largely underutilized. It is heavily used in the late winter to start garden plantings, early and mid winter for chick brooding, and late fall for chicken processing. The rest of the time? Nuttin. I have been searching for an idea that takes advantage of its unique strengths, and filthy brooders ain't it. Meat processing could fit the bill. (I am still holding out hope for something cheese related. Or anything else that keeps the mother-in-law away.)

[ronron]

We butcher all our own meat including beef, when we do cows we gather several friends to help we have a group of friend who help each other butcher our beef. We have a friend who is a butcher he helps, each person who is having a cow butchered pays him $100.00 for cutting...
We have a walk in cooler, band saw, cuber, grinder, with 10 people helping give or take. With the proper equipment you can do 2 cows in four or five hours, one thing not mentioned here are meat scrapers used for scraping the bone dust and shards off steaks... After doing many cows this way I could do a cow by myself if necessary... keep everything cool let the cows hang in a cooler for 15 to 20 days, start with the front quarters they are smaller.. A battery sawsall would be a extremely useful... Make sure the cutters are calling out the meat cuts as they are moving them to the next person, it is useful to have someone keeping track of the cuts, there will be a lot of steaks and roasts, and a huge amount of hamburger... If you are going to continue to live off the land it is worth learning how to handle all aspects of farming, it's feels more humane to me.. You can slowly pick up equipment off craigs list, and you don't need a big space we just back our cars out of the garage where the cooler is, our garage is pretty clean but my husband always shop vacumes the area the day before we cut meat.. When we are done butchering all our equipment gets cleaned oiled covered and placed into the cooler for storage along with the table tops, there is still room for smaller game in the cooler if necessary...

[CountryWannabe]

I butcher everything here - either by myself or with help from my daughter - except cattle. I do not have the facilities for them. I usually just bone out everything, though I do have a cheap bandsaw-type thing with a grinder (I find that more trouble than it's worth) I have done chickens, goats, pigs, sheep and rabbits. Last year I took lambs to the butcher because I was moving and just didn't have the time, but now I will be doing them myself again.

I use a 9mm pistol for the kill, an engine hoist to hang the animal while I skin and gut it. I have several good quality knives, but the curved skinning knife, the large breaking knife and the small boning knife are the ones most used. I have a good butcher-quality meat saw (heavy, but worth it) for cutting the carcass, through bones, etc. and I use a bone-dust scraper to make sure that there is no residue on my cuts. I work on one of those white plastic folding tables. I use a Foodsaver to vacuum pack the cuts.

To learn how to cut the meat I watched a LOT of You Tube videos. The first few were not very pretty, but they were definitely edible. Practice makes perfect. I am not perfect yet, but my cuts are usually recognizable now.

Mary