Need Help - Wife is apprehensive about harvesting our livestock

I felt kinda bad the first time I processed a lamb...until I tasted it! It was fantastic, we fed it to all of our house guests until it ran out. All but one decided raising your own meat wasn't such a bad idea after all (they were very skeptical in the beginning!) My advice is to cook the goats with the best recipie you can think of (never mind if it is half butter or cheese!) Just to get the ball rolling, the memory of the first meal will stick with your wife forever, so it needs to be especially good. Also pick livestock that are as homogenous as possible, the less you can tell them apart the easier it is to butcher because they haven't taken on any identity.

Another technique is to curse at your goats everytime you see them (they don't know the difference) this way you can build up a solid grudge against them before butchering time comes! (Similar to the moving them in the house technique!)

But seriously, the thought and excitment of getting the next batch of animals helps me, maybe let her decide what to replace the goats with...

Me I guess I'm just Heartless.But I tell the Kids and DW to not play with their food.Comes time to Butcher put whatever down tell them well got to get it finished up.Don't stop until it is in the freezer.

Don't put up with any crying or fussing,raise the animals to butcher.Get over it!

big rockpile

__________________
I love being married.Its so great to find that one person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.



If I need a Shelter
If I need a Friend
I go to the Rock!

now thats funny rock.

You've gotten some great ideas.

Maybe for the next animals let her pick what she wants to raise **to be butchered**. Maybe goats is a big first step for her.

We started with chickens because let's face it they're just lizards with feathers. Then we added rabbits because although they're cute when young, they're stupid and there are always more, more, more of them.

Maybe letting her pick something she likes to eat but that hasn't got a ton of personality will help her adjust.

__________________
Our homestead-in-the-making: Palazzo Rospo
Eating the dream

I'd rather have a spouse who had SOME feelings over whacking the livestock as opposed to her smiling and wanting to be the one to fire the gun..LOL..

It was VERY difficult for this former city gal to whack anything..but then I took myself to the supermarket, looked at the chicken carcasses and said to myself.."well, somebody whacked these didn't they?..and I'd thought nothing about buying dead chickens before..hmmmmmm.." It's just when you buy a dead critter, you really don't have to think about "how" it got there..I've seen these huge trucks out on the highway, stuffed with chickens, packed in like sardines, etc..blech..would prefer to have a hand in whacking humanely..don't care for the term "harvesting"..IMHO, that's too sterile..it's killing, slaughtering, whacking..

If I were your wife's friend, I'd talk ( gently) to her about how, yes..it IS hard to whack an animal that you've raised..yet that animal isn't that different from the ones already dead in the market..just cheaper and healthier to eat.

pigs did it for me. they were mildly cute at first, but by the time they were 200lbs and knocking me over in their pen, (and the realization that if I were to lay there I would be THEIR dinner) I started counting down the days. they were named bacon and porkchop adn are very yummy. goats are pretty cute, sociable, etc..and would be very hard to start with. I have yet to butcher my own but will have plenty for the freezer next year. I will make it a point to not "play with my food" when they are born and plan on sending them to the butcher and not doing it myself. baby steps. roosters are easy especially if they're mean or wake you up at 4 a.m. for months on end, so they might be a good start too.

something that really made me want to raise my own food was the thought that if things went really bad in the world (shtf) than I want to have the skills and resources on hand or nearby to take care of my family. maybe that will convince her. how would she feed her children if she could not longer go to the store and buy food? would she know how? maybe that will be as terrifying to her as it is to me. good luck

__________________
A mystery is not an explanation..... on the contrary....no sooner is a myth forged than, in order to stand it needs another myth to support it.

Oh, no, no, no! According to the PETA protesters at the local KFC, "chickens are our friends"! :baby04:

I got 3 dozen day-old chicks back in May. I can't wait until the little velociraptors are ready for the freezer. Aggressive little so-and-sos.

__________________
"Crivens!"

Half Caper Farm - breeding Saanens, Boers and Nigerian Dwarfs

The first time is the hardest, unless you never do it. In that case send the little meat animals to my place I have already done my first time.

Is your wife excited at the prospect of quitting her full time job to do these things? If she is, then maybe discussing that this transition will require her to be comfortable with raising meat animals would help. If she's not really excited about the whole idea, then I would say there may be an entirely different issue at hand.

I didn't think I would ever be able to kill and eat an animal. I was raised in the city and animals are pets to me. That is till I got chickens! I can wring a neck in a heart beat and only feel guilty for a minute after. I can take a calf to the meat processors but..... I couldn't kill and eat one of my little goaties.They might not be the best things to get if she has that mothering instinct. They not only are cute they are like dogs and they love you back. Might eat one of mine if I were hungry. I would eat the chickens first though..

I told dh that if we ever get livestock that I will do the "chores" to care for them but that I absolutely, emphatically REFUSE to get emotionally involved. No name giving, no scratching behind the ears, no oogie oogie business. Nevertheless I know that it would be very, very difficult to dispatch them anyway, especially something cute like a goat or lamb. I think when the time comes we will just load them up into the truck and take them to the meat processor and then go pick them up once they are wrapped in butcher paper. It seems like it would be easier that way. Certainly not on-farm butchering for me. Not even chickens. I know they are going to be killed, but I will NOT be the one who does it, ever.

donsgal

__________________
Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (John Lennon)

And it was a lot happier animal while it lived too! I feel a lot guiltier over the meat I buy in the store knowing how it was probably raised, than I do over the animals I butcher myself. They had a happy, well-fed life, and had no idea that bullet was coming....then its over. They died happy and healthy. What more can anyone ask??

__________________
Emily Dixon
Ozark Jewels
Nubians & Lamanchas
www.ozarkjewels.net

"Remember, no man is a failure, who has friends" -Clarence

It doesn't bother me at all to butcher. Cornish Rock cross broilers are cute as can be at a day old, but just downright ugly by the time they are ready to butcher! I do those & rabbits. I have also helped do deer. I know, not a farm animal, but they are pretty too. I would have no problem helping do hogs or beef if we had the means to do them. We usually take them to a processor. I do not make pets out of any destined for the freezer. I have 10 rabbits now that need to be butchered soon & 100 broilres that will be ready in a few weeks.

__________________
I can't believe I deleted it!

We had this discussion. We started breeding rabbits specifically for eating. After we raised that first batch and 10 weeks passed and 12 weeks, and my Dh says well are we going to breed again? I said we have some butchering to do. Neither of us could bring ourselves to do it. I said at that point we butcher or we stop eating meat. Even though we may not be the ones doing the killing, we are responsible for the death of every animal we eat. We disagree with how animals are treated in the factory farms and we cannot afford to pay "organic" prices and "organic" does not insure the animal was treated humanely anyway. So we butcher the animals that we have treated well and fed well or we stop eating meat. We butchered the rabbits and they were delicious. Our breeding rabbits do have names, but the babies do not.

I agree, pigs and chickens are good ones to start with. Chickens when you do a bunch, you don't know which one you are eating. And pigs are so incredibly obnoxious, they would definitely eat you if they could knock you down. I frequently told my 4 year old to get out of the pig's pen (Hammie, Porkchop, Lunch & Dinner), quit playing with your food, before they knock you down & eat you. It was a day of rejoicing when we sent them to butcher. The food should be ready to pick-up on Saturday and I can't wait to see how it tastes.

Have her read Fast Food Nation. That'll make you want to grow your own meat. I never want to eat store meat again...ever ever ever!

__________________
Visit me at http://www.countrylifewithcountrywife.blogspot.com/

www.NightwoodForge.etsy.com

Ditto Nomad!

But, I agree too that goats are too petlike... I just couldn't. Might be better to start with chickens or something like that.

When we got our ducks, we agreed that some of them would be for meat. It was really hard, they are adorable pets. However, I realized that I do eat meat and all of it started out an animal and I wanted to be sober when I ate meat as to where it comes from. Also, I hate the factory farm thing and my own pets I know are loved, killed as kindly as I can manage and never mistreated. I really do feel a lot better about eating them than the ones raised in factories, who do have a horrible life and a nasty death.

A goat might be even harder, but when it was time, I would make myself do what had to be done.

__________________
~ Carol

I have no problem with the chickens, the rabbits, the calves, the lambs - they all end up in the freezer, and all are home butchered.

I can't eat my goats. I can't eat anyone else's goats either. So, I don't eat them. They provide milk, companionship, brush clearing, pack services, and entertainment. They earn their feed.

LOL! that brings back memories.


my best friend and her husband raised cattle and had one set aside for household use. Her neice came over to play and asked the name of the steer.

Deb said, "we don't name food animals"

Neice Said, "Everything HAS to have a name...."

Finally the Neice turned and smiled, patting the steer on the nose, "I'll name you happy Meal."

I used to raise meat animals, and it was ok, as long as I wasn't the one that had to actually "kill" them. I helped with the skinning and cleaning and packaging... But the "ending the life" I had/have prolbems with.

I married a man that's more squeemish then I So when it came to butchering the chickens I had to step up to the plate.

Its better if you Have a butcher to do it. Somoene local that you can drop the animal off at.. After a few hard times, (don't let her come with you for the drop off) It will be easier. Like one person said above, its like going to the grocery store with a better end product.