Slaughterhouse backup

The wife saw online that the local slaughterhouses were backed up to anywhere from December to February. She just called the one that we like to go to and the earliest appointment to get a steer in was January 13 2021. She went ahead and made an appointment. We just butchered in December and one will last us just about a year, so we should be OK, but it's a good thing we didn't wait any longer. The guy who buys two for his kids for Christmas from us every year is tough out of luck this year.

We've been getting inquiries about price and availability weekly and sometimes daily for the past few months. We tell them all the same thing, call the slaughterhouse where you want us to take it, make an appointment and let us know when it needs to be there. Nobody has called back. I'd been telling everybody that I'd bet they wouldn't be able to get one in anywhere before August. I guess I was a little short.

The one where we just made the appointment has already said "no deer" this year. They have to save capacity for cattle and hogs. I've been laughing at these people who were all excited about buying those $90 hogs out in South Dakota. I've told them those hogs would die of old age before they'd find anybody to slaughter them unless they planned to do it themselves in their back yard.

People can slaughter them themselves,pretty good pay for a couple days work.

Can, but who do you know that will? Especially the ones who don't even know how to tell the butcher to cut and package it for them.

I'm glad I never got in to the whole local, direct to consumer thing now. A guy that I used to sell Holstein bull calves to back when we milked cows got in to it a year ago by opening up an on farm store. He had huge success and quit his day job. I don't know what he's going to do now. He said he took four steers and three hogs last week to the place that we booked today. He said those ones he took are pretty much spoken for. He might be taking things to the sale barn for a while now until they get through the backlog.

Does your state have state inspected slaughterhouses that are not USDA places? Many of them in my area that do only deer in season but do livestock in the off season,can't
sell the meat to anyone retail,not supposed to anyway.

There are just a few that are USDA, the one we use the most and have the appointment is one of them that is. Most all of them process deer and retail beef and pork out of their facilities. I have a neighbor who processes deer. He got in trouble a few years ago for making venison sausage. He wasn't supposed to be adding anything to the meat, just cutting and wrapping it. I'm pretty sure somebody at the grocery store here in town that processes deer too turned him in because he was taking business away from them.

A neighbor stopped this morning wanting one. I told him what I knew. We got to kicking ideas around and he mentioned having a Mennonite do it. I told him there was one who butchers and about where he lives if he wanted to check it out. He came back about two hours later and said he didn't have a definite date,but that he could do it in about two months. He said he'd call me as soon as he had something definite.

Have heard that here in Ohio if you are licenced to butcher Dear on your property you cannot do any other animal. That said if they took all butchering tools to your place they could do it, just not in same building because of some dear disease. Person that told me tis, wife is a cousin of mine. And it is his son-in-law brother that does the butchering. So not a random unknamed sourse.

Like I eluded to in another reply, the grocery store here even processes deer.

I called my butcher, he says the quickest he can get to a beef for me is mid August. I told him I'd have something by then. His next comment to me was he probably wasn't going to take any wild meat this fall.. I guess that's his way of telling me to keep farming and not spend much time hunting this year. With that I got on the books for another beef in December..

I had to chuckle at the title of this post. The first thing to cross my mind was the summer I worked for a local ma & pa butcher that did everything from bullet to bag as they put it. Only worked there one season. The room where they hooked & dressed the carcasses wasn't all that big. It only had the one floor drain that ran out back to a tank. Thing were fine until the orders came in to supply the local county fair. The drain system couldn't keep up with all that "processing" & things backed up real quick until you were shin deep in "it", slippin'-&-a-slidin'. I think it only got pumped out every other day if memory serves. Ended up getting shut down a couple years after that due to a leaky tank in the watershed of the river behind the place. The DNR seemed to frown upon that. It is a bummer, as the people I worked for were some of the nicest, good natured folks that I've known. They came from Denmark in the late '40s & had an accent so thick they had to chew through it. Lightning fast trimming up those cuts, too. Never seen anything like it since.

Mike

Deer are catching that prion disease and it is evolving into something pretty serious. It might take some time yet, but when it becomes a ?thing? it will really be something. The proteins fold into something bad and it messes up the brain. And no one wants to cook their venison at 900 degrees to kill off the possible prions.....

It?s a bad deal coming.

Paul

Its the same deal as Mad Cow disease remember that?

Just the opposite in my area the processors won't take anything but deer during deer season,say they make a lot more money on deer than livestock.