Butchering own cattle?

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crimsoncrazy

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Hey I was just wondering how many of you guys butcher your own cattle. We have someone come out to the house and slaughter the calves, quarter them and hang them in our freezer. We usually do four steers a year. We do them two at a time because that all the will fit in the freezer. Usually let them hang about 2 weeks then the whole family gets together and cuts it up.
 
We don't butcher our own. I don't have the facilities or the experience that my local processor has. His fee is very reasonable and his service is great.
 
Nooooooo thankyou.

I too have a prefered processor who does a really good job with processing, has a smoker, makes the BEST jerkey, and is worth the price for me to not have to see all that blood and pass out. :banana:

I can do a lot of things.... splint a broken legg, pull a calf, stitch up a wound, but there are some things I just don't do. De-horn, and butcher are amoung two of those things on my list. :help:
 
by kickinbull on Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:07 pm

how many eat meat from their own farm?
I will not eat beef from my own farm. Even though I know they were raised, fed and cared for properly and spoiled like they were pets, I just can not do it. I am sure the meat is wonderful too.
 
I have done it; but it is an awful lof of work. Dressing a 150 lb deer SEEMS like it is work; but even with the help of a tractor with loader and a garden hose a 1200 lb steer is much more labor intensive and messy.
 
We butcher our cattle for our own consumption. My dads side of the family gets together the day after thanksgiving to start the butchering process. Usually butcher 4 steers and 7 or 8 hogs. It is nice to know where our beef comes from and it is very informative to know exactly which cuts come from where. Besides, nothing tastes better than a cooked hog kidney coming out of the cast iron kettle at lunch time. Yum! My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
 
We do one steer and 2 pigs for our own family's use every year , we do it in the wintertime since we have no cooler , the steers that we sell as freezer beef are taken to a local butcher to be proscessed.
 
We do eat our own farm-raised beef. We take the animal to a processor.

I have, in the past, and still occasionally butcher a hog or two here, otherwise they go to the same processor as the steer/heifer.

Katherine
 
Weaver":94ohfu8d said:
We butcher our cattle for our own consumption. My dads side of the family gets together the day after thanksgiving to start the butchering process. Usually butcher 4 steers and 7 or 8 hogs. It is nice to know where our beef comes from and it is very informative to know exactly which cuts come from where. Besides, nothing tastes better than a cooked hog kidney coming out of the cast iron kettle at lunch time. Yum! My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Aww man...Tenderloin is for lunch time. Kidneys go in the head sausage. Tsk tsk tsk. :p
 
The reason I raise cattle is to eat the meat,or I would not have them.. Usually 2 head spring and 2 or 3 in fall. Butcher does it , hang 14 to 16 days and cut and vaccumn packed.....Sell halves sometime 800 $ , I paid for everything and usually haul it to them, and help put in freezer with them...They get about 225 to 240 lbs per half... Have a nov 30 kill date set for 3 head....they are on ber. grass hay and corn for 60 to 90 days...abouy 32 months and they are some big boys, the biggest I have ever raised I think..
 
I kill a few every year. Eat a lot of beef in our family. And sell a lot from home, because it makes it possible to earn some money from it, contrary to those sold trough usual channels, slim margin, an taxes to that.
Tongue is for dinner the first day.
 
We butcher our own. It's usually an open heifer or two. We have a band saw, grinder, locker, etc. Even a whole room dedicated to the process. We do, however, have a mobile slaughter guy come out and whack em for us. For $65 bucks he gets them hanging in halves. He is done in 20 minutes what takes me 3 hours. I've watched him, I don't know how many times, and I still can't improve my time. The time saved is worth the money to me.
 
Nooooo! Just couldn't do that even though I know I should. :oops: .I would become a vegetarian!!! :shock:
 
alisonb":3nxzxclz said:
Nooooo! Just couldn't do that even though I know I should. :oops: .I would become a vegetarian!!! :shock:
Sounds like a girl thing.
 
We raise our own meat too, but we take it to a processor because we do not have the facilities, plus the winters never get really cold enough anymore.

When my husband was a kid (he is 69), his family would butcher their hogs on a cold winter day. It was a big deal. His father had 5 brothers and all of the uncles, aunts and cousins would come to their house on that day. They would butcher the hogs, scrap them and divide the meat among the families.

We haven't had any problem with our children eating home raised beef or pork because we don't make pets out of the ones we eat. I can honestly say that when the freezer is empty and I have to buy meat at the store, whenever I look at the prices, the steer in the pasture looks tastier every day!
 
chippie":39d575zz said:
... I can honestly say that when the freezer is empty and I have to buy meat at the store, whenever I look at the prices, the steer in the pasture looks tastier every day!

I've found that the meat I can get in the store is actually cheeper than what I can process my own for (including the value of the animal) However.... the quality of my own animal is sooo much beter. :nod:

Remember when processing your own animal, your pound of hamburger is one pound of your own cow hamburger, a pound of hamburger from the large chain is a pound of a hundred different animals all blended together. :dunce:
 
I've butchered most my life, but now that I've got some age on me, I pull to the abbatoir and pay them. I'm lucky to have a good relationship with them and I don't have but 12 miles to go ! :)
 
crimsoncrazy":2t2qdbsj said:
Hey I was just wondering how many of you guys butcher your own cattle. We have someone come out to the house and slaughter the calves, quarter them and hang them in our freezer. We usually do four steers a year. We do them two at a time because that all the will fit in the freezer. Usually let them hang about 2 weeks then the whole family gets together and cuts it up.
That must be a slightly larger than normal freezer. On that note what good does it do to hang them in freezing temps?
 

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