For NCWayne Hides

Burnie · Mar 22, 2011

How are you going Wayne? Had a talk with a friend who is a livestock instructor over lunch today about hide thickness. He does a bit of leather-work himself and agrees that thick leather is getting harder to find. He said the main factors in hide thickness are age and gender. Male cattle have thicker hides than females. Incidently, the thickest part of the hide is the area each side of the backbone. Hide thickness slowly develops in cattle until they mature. In adult cattle, the rate of hide thickness development is greater in males. This means that the hide of an old cow will not be that much thicker than bull/steer that is 3 or 4 years old. Since larger numbers of cows and nearly all steers are now slaugthered around the time they mature, they don't live long enough to develop the really thick hides required for some applications. The main source today is from bulls that have passed their use by date. To make matters worse, tanneries often shave down hides to a uniform thickness which better suits mass production. This would explain why thick leather is getting harder to find. Hope this helps.

NCWayne · Mar 22, 2011

Hey Burnie, thanks for the reply. It's amazing what good information you can find if you ask the right people. Funny thing is your guy said basically the same thing I was told, and have since researched out a little on my own just our of curiousity, only minus the part about the wrong age for them being taken to slaughter. Anyway, Thanks for taking the time to do the research and for letting me know what you found. Wayne

For NCWayne Hides

Burnie

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NCWayne

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