Researching to raise cattle for meat - Need help on butchering

[Baymule]

@Latestarter I just love you hanging outside instructions, but you can forget that. You are moving to Texas.

 

[Latestarter]

yeah... I'd best be remembering that huh?

 

[greybeard]

yeah... I'd best be remembering that huh?

Unless, no matter how cold it is, you just want to feed the coyotes and buzzards.
The old turkey vultures (large bird with a red head) weren't much of a problem, but the influx of Mexican black buzzards (smaller than turkey vultures and have a black head/white wing tips) over the last few decades has become a real problem. They are very aggressive and do attack anything giving birth. Turkey vultures hunt by smell, meaning decaying tissue, but these black devils hunt by eyesight and smell--they look for anything to kill and eat.

 

[Hens and Roos]

We just picked up a book and so far it seems to have some good information

https://www.amazon.com/Butchering-Poultry-Rabbit-Lamb-Goat/dp/1612121829

 

[farmerjan]

AMEN to the black buzzards. They are here in Va and they will attack any smaller live animal too. Had them come in under a shed attached to a barn we were renting. I mean big long shed along one side of the barn, shed was probably 16 x 40 feet and attack a baby calf that was penned in there when I first got him. He was a bottle calf and had scours when he was given to me , and when I went up one afternoon for his feeding, he was in the corner and they were trying to peck his rear out, blood everywhere and then realized they had gone for his eyes and I had to put him down. Got a few of the b*****ds too even theough it is supposed to be illegal to shoot them.. This past year the state game commission has finally listened to farmers and the damage those black bobs cause and they passed some legislation to allow for the killing of them I think. Doesn't matter, we just dispose of them whenever we can and they disappear. They even drive off the old "turkey" buzzards that we used to have everywhere. They really weren't a problem but these others are.
Anyway, off the subject matter. Everything everyone has said here is true. I am a big believer in doing it yourself, but at nearly 63 , female, and with joint issues, forget any big butchering. The aging is the biggest thing on your own place, and we often don't have a 2 week stretch here in the western part of va that is cold enough without freezing to properly hang an animal. Might be good for 4-5 days then get a warm spell with temps up in the 50's or something. Our state laws are funny about stuff like bringing in outside meat just for hanging, but the biggest thing is space. I do not know of a single shop that has enough space to hang meat they are not going to work up themselves. Maybe if you can do them in the summer when the least amount of slaughter is going on. You really need to talk to a local place to see what they can/will do. I like the idea of renting a cooler box with some neighbors to split the cost if you are determined to do it yourself. Figure a hanging weight of a 1000 lb steer to be 500lbs, so a 1/2 is 250. Hanging time definitely varies, fat cover makes a big difference and here we also have laws on how fast the chilling has to be done and it makes for tougher meat if you have grassfed which like wild game has less outside cover fat than "corn-fed". I have my jersey steers, grassfed, hung for 14 to 21 days. Usually in the 18 day range due to space in the place I take them. You need to have big enough equipment to handle big pieces of meat. Most all places here do vacuum pack too, and it is the only way to go for long storage. The space to spread out the meat to quick freeze it is critical to the keeping quality. All the places here will send it back to you frozen, take coolers and stuff them full and you have several hours to get home and get it in the freezer arranged the way you want.

 

[farmerjan]

The choice of breed is personal, but a few rules of thumb. Dairy breeds will be leaner than a beef breed. I am a devoted jersey beef person, the meat has a fine texture, and a little sweeter flavor than other breeds. Holsteins and brown swiss are bigger boned breeds, they grow alot of bone/size before they put on meat. Every brown swiss I have ever done has been tough, and I hear from the buyers at the stockyards that, that is one of the reasons that they don't bring the price as the yield grade is lower so they are more for things like ground beef etc. I love their dispositions but they grow slower and get older and tougher before they get "finished". Jerseys finish pretty well if the pasture is good, holsteins and swiss need grain to finish. Guernseys are between, and have never had ayshire or other dairy breeds. Guernseys have a yellow fat and some people find it objectionable, but I like it fine. If the dairy breeds any of their cows to a beef bull as a cleanup bull, get a crossbred calf. They will have more meat, a jersey/angus cross will finish real nice. Due to the mad cow disease, and since you eat wild game, deer, you probably know about it, but , any beef over 27 months has to have the backbone and spinal cord taken out as they have determined that that is the magic age for the prions to cause the disease and the subsequent possibility of humans coming down with the corresponding disease. I try to finish an animal between 20 and 26 months for tenderness but alot of that will be the feed quality that goes in them. Hope this helps a little. I am like @goatgurl I feed a little grain to keep them coming in the pen and friendlier; too old to chase them, and don't want animals that want to be "stupid" or aggressive. If they don't get with the program, then they can go to someone else"s place or have a new job like a "big mac" attack!!!!

 

[NH homesteader]

@farmerjan can you elaborate on the mad cow disease and having to take out the spinal cord? I haven't heard this. I don't raise beef or eat much of it, but how does this apply to wild game? we eat venison...

 

[farmerjan]

Can't remember all the hype but several years ago there was a big thing about the sick deer in the west and they determined they had a form of the mad cow disease. Try searching for it on the internet but I do know that here in va they had a hunter that had gotten a deer that didn't seem so healthy looking and the hunter took it to a place to be worked up, told the processor and it was taken in and determined that it had this. There is a name for the "wild" animal version of it. Signs are poor hair coat, starving appearance after killing and skinning, just not looking healthy. Hunters in va are advised in the game booklet with the hunting rules/laws on things to look for. It's been years since that huge problem in england with the mad cow problem, but what I can remember, there is a protein that causes the prions ( or prion that causes the proteins) to mutate and that causes the animal to get mad cow. It seems there are all kinds of theories, and I am not sure how much of it I even believe, but this prion has always been found in the spinal cords of mature animals that have mad cow which is really bovine spongy encephalmylitis or something like that. This caused the law that said that anything over 27 months could not have the backbone or anything attached to the spinal cord. Brain was also part of it. There have been theories of links to krone's disease, and the human version is jacob-cretzfeld or something like that. I don't have the info in front of me but do a little research on the internet. In wild herds I think they originally called it wasting disease. If you raise your own meat it is probably a moot point, but the slaughter places here have to abide by those rules and I believe they are federal.

 

[NH homesteader]

How interesting. Thanks for sharing that. My husband is the hunter of the family and he wouldn't shoot an animal that looked unhealthy and if he did we wouldn't eat it! But that's even more incentive not to!

 

[farmerjan]

Seems to me that they don't think the wild deer population type can be transmitted to humans, but who knows. And of course most every hunter is smart enough to not eat an animal that doesn"t look healthy....Actually shooting an animal that doesn't look healthy is probably a good thing for the overall well being of the deer population, and getting a game warden to have an animal like that checked out is probably in everyone's best interest for the viability of the general deer population. Like rabies, kill an animal that seems to be off is better than it going and biting several other animals before it dies....