cost of animal slaughtered for freezer

jack77

Hi all, was reading the posts today and was wondering, how much would you have to pay to cover slaughter & boning down to useable joints? and would the slaughter house do it all or do you need a butcher as well? does it make financal sense to get an animal processed for the deep freeze? often wondered about it but never gave it any serious thought til what i was reading on the posts, is there an optimum age of animal for flavour and quantity? i dont have pigs so it'd be cattle i'd be interested in getting done, thanks for ye're thoughts

foxylock

Well Jack I bring two lambs to the butcher every year around late November and he charges 25 euro per lamb to kill and joint, everything done right and meat brought home in plastic bags clearly labelled. I use grass fed lambs only and the meat is incomparable to what you buy in the shops (in a good way) Dunno bout beef might look into it next year, you'd wanna big freezer I reckon!!

fodda

They say "you are what you eat" and i believe this.

With lamb they say you can taste the difference if fed on bagged meal than grass?

With pigs in some countries where the pigs eat acorns and nuts from other trees the meat is unique as the taste is supposed to be so much different.

What is an animals natural food?

Pigs dont eat corn or barley .....they eat grass, roots, seeds, grubs, nuts, vegetation, root vegetables.

Put sheep in wild ground and they will eat lots of other vegetation before the grass and would maybe never eat the stuff that is in bagged meal.

Cattle are very similar and would never eat grain which some countries feed their cattle on.

So i firmly believe that if you want a better tasting meat, then feed the animals their natural food that they want to eat.

Just my 2 pennith worth

bbam

We're having two pigs butchered at the moment...

€25 each to slaughter & €50-55 to cure into bacon, would be less if we wanted pork as well but we wanted all bacon..

lar203

i have two pigs there to be butchered where bid you get yours done

sinewc

jack77 wrote: »

Hi all, was reading the posts today and was wondering, how much would you have to pay to cover slaughter & boning down to useable joints? and would the slaughter house do it all or do you need a butcher as well? does it make financal sense to get an animal processed for the deep freeze? often wondered about it but never gave it any serious thought til what i was reading on the posts, is there an optimum age of animal for flavour and quantity? i dont have pigs so it'd be cattle i'd be interested in getting done, thanks for ye're thoughts

Hi
We kill one of our heifers each year mostly.
There are a couple of pro's and con's.
Firstly it costs €160/€190(Can't quite remember). thats from her in the butchers yard in durrow co laois to in bags labelled in our freezer. There's a few things you need to watch out for.
1- you don't want her over Fat.
2- younger heifers are more tender.
3- our local Meat factory will sell meat direct so i'm considering buying off them as i think it will work out the same if not cheaper. at least you'll know the meat is probably local.
4- the grass fed animal is all very well and good for taste but if you want the carcass weight you'll have to feed her some amount of meal in my opinion. just a little bit.

it's hard to know exactly if the butcher is stealing your meat or not. your kinda at his mercy, bar you see him weigh the carcass cold. we weighed or animal live before we sent her and then got a cold weight off the butcher and we reckoned she killed out 56% which isn't too bad. but i don't trust him personally.

Si

jimmydkid

We put a heifer in freezer every year, this years heifer was 25 months old and we left the carcase hang for three weeks and we couldnt be happier at the quality of meat, even fussy steak eaters are complimenting it.
The butcher charged €300 euro, incl blast freezing meat

blue5000

We got a small weanling done this year for 100e, I reckon there was 90-100kg of meat in it, very happy with it, as it never got a jab of a needle or a worm dose in it's life. Ballpark is 300e for a 2yr old animal, incl slaughter, butcher, bagging and freezing.

Old threads here

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=69952294

tack365

Just got a heifer done in local butcher. Get one done every other year or so depending whats on the farm. Cost €200 for a smallish 20month fresian.

It usually cost around €250 but was a bit cheaper for the smaller animal.

Just had some fillet steak tonight and was lovely.

YouBuyLocal

Can anyone say what the price comparison is with supermarket meat?

Just forgetting about quality, which I know can be far higher, but I was trying to calculate it before and thought it would have been about 50% cheaper to buy direct from farmer, slaughter, butcher, etc for deep freeze, with all of the cuts seperated in freezer for convenience when defrosting/cooking.

What yee think, more/less? Its an interesting question and since most people have one large freezer these days, or they are at least easy to get, the only thing preventing more people doing this is the fear of it being abnormal & unfamiliar, or fear of lack of regulation or something.

What do yee think?

blue5000

YouBuyLocal wrote: »

Can anyone say what the price comparison is with supermarket meat?

Just forgetting about quality, which I know can be far higher, but I was trying to calculate it before and thought it would have been about 50% cheaper to buy direct from farmer, slaughter, butcher, etc for deep freeze, with all of the cuts seperated in freezer for convenience when defrosting/cooking.

What yee think, more/less? Its an interesting question and since most people have one large freezer these days, or they are at least easy to get, the only thing preventing more people doing this is the fear of it being abnormal & unfamiliar, or fear of lack of regulation or something.

What do yee think?

I reckon there is probably a difference in taste between supermarket beef and butcher's beef. Mainly because the butcher beef is hung for longer, what you buy in the supermarket today was probably walking around last week. Also there may be a difference in taste between frozen and fresh, don't know for definite though.

I can't imagine a housewife wanting to fork out 300 quid in one go for half a heifer though.

YouBuyLocal

First of all, as I said, forget about quality for a second.

Second of all, you're thinking about it in the wrong way. Forget about what you can "imagine" or not. There are no stocking costs involved with this. There is not that much cost efficiency involved. You kill one or three animals and sell them direct. You don't need hundreds of people to fork up cash to make a profit. You don't need the local "mass-market" consumer, just a few households you've built up relationships with.

Read this:
http://www.farmersjournal.ie/site/farming-Build-a-customer-base-by-selling-directly-11261.html

As it becomes more normal over time and is proven to save money then it may pick up, especially if the sellers are HACCP registered with all relevent certs and accreditations etc.

Think about it like this, a small producer can't sell through a supermarket because they can't meet capacity. But there is no capacity necessary when you sell direct, you are selling, killing and distributing as the orders come in and the animal/veg is ready for sale.

So your comment on the average housewife is irrelevent.