What you Need to Know about Taking a Cow to the Butcher, Cost, Cuts and More!

hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome back to another beautiful day here on the stoney ridge farm today is a video by popular request and we're just going to talk to you guys about what you need to know when taking an animal to the butcher so we're out here in the cow pasture today we're going to learn a little bit we're going to talk a little bit about what you can expect cost wise what you can expect hauling wise to haul the animal to the butcher or abattoir or slaughterhouse whichever one you want to call it and we need to talk a little bit about the timeline that you guys need to be thinking about if you're raising your own food or your own animals for your consumption or to sell off of your farm ranch or homestead so let's learn a little bit about what it's like to take a cow to the butcher all right [Music] stoney all right folks welcome to the stoney ridge if this is your first time here please jump in pound that like button i'd love to have you back today we're going to learn a little bit there's going to be a bunch of information i'm going to feed you with a fire hose it's going to be fun and you're going to learn so go back and watch this again and again if you need to if you need to learn a little bit over and over again you're going to hear repetitive information here so you've got two types of cows that you'll probably take to the market and you guys are welcome to post comments down there if you can think of any other situation where you might take a cow to the market to the market meaning to the butcher shop the abattoir or the slaughterhouse abattoir is a fancy word for slaughterhouse so what we had was a cold cow a cold cow was a seven year old cow that you typically would not take to the butcher shop she was a brood cow she was a brood cow that continued to fail at breeding she wouldn't take or she would have a stillbirth so this cow had a stillbirth last year she had foot problems last year she had foot problems this year and i just decided it was time to take her in her weight was somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 1600 pounds we took her over to the butcher shop she dressed out hanging weight at 827 pounds that is a heavy heavy cow that's one type of cow that you might want to take to the butcher shop okay the other type of cow would be a cow that you raised out yourself so say you went to the sale barn and you bought some young heifer cows or some young steer cows and you're gonna raise them out and i use cow as a broad statement as a bovine animal we can talk about that too cow is a animal that is either pregnant or had a baby open cow is a cow that is open and is not pregnant a pregnant cow is obviously a pregnant cow a heifer is a cow that's never been bred a steer is a bull without his man parts so that's what we're talking about here okay typically you're going to take a steer to the butcher shop you're going to raise a steer out to be anywhere from 12 to 18 months or so now there are certain rules and laws that you guys need to know about for making like t-bone steaks so if a cow is older than i believe 18 months you correct me if i'm wrong guys correct me in the comments if a cow's older than 18 months due to the mad cow disease situation that we had years ago several years back they will not make a t-bone steak for you in other words they don't want any of that nerve tissue from the backbone from the spinal cord in your meat because that runs a higher risk of contracting mad cow disease if your cow were to have something like that so that's something to think about the way this worked was we took our cow which was a coal cow was a seven-year-old cow and we took her to the butcher shop we loaded her up on the trailer ran her through the handling equipment and you want to make sure if you're medicating your animals that you read all the directions on the medications that you're giving your animals so say you dewormed your cows a month ago you probably don't want to take that cow to the butcher shop at all you need to call and establish a relationship with your local butcher shop okay guys with this entire crazy economy that we have right now butcher shops are anywhere from 12 to 18 to even 24 months out so you've got to go ahead and get an appointment established even if you're just now going to buy your young cow to raise out for your family's feed or i say feed food or if you are raising a cow to sell so to potentially sell in other words the cow that we are processing we're going to sell some we're going to use some for ourselves and we're going to give some to family we are taking our cow to a usda inspected facility and that's something that's very very important if you plan on selling to the general public if you and your uncle are splitting a cow or you and your uncle and your cousin and your dad are doing force of a cow or thirds of a cow then you probably don't need to worry about that but that's something that's important so when you make that first phone call to introduce yourself to your local abattoir you need to establish whether that is a usda inspected facility or not depending on your needs for your beef and for your family now we loaded up our cow we took it up there to the butcher shop and we use mitchell's mitchell's butchering i guess is what it's called it's up in walnut cove north carolina and we're right here in north carolina we lucked up guys we called up there they were 12 months out we put ourselves on the waiting list the cancellation list and we got a call one week later super super lucky super lucky because this cow was kind of limping around the farm she was showing improvement but she still had problems and we wanted to go ahead and make her into hamburger now if you've got a young cow a young steer you may want to make your steaks and all your different cuts of meat if you've got an older cow like this like we're processing we're going to make about 90 percent hamburger the reason we're making about 90 hamburger is because an older cow is going to be tougher the younger cow is going to be a better tasting cow there's tons of research out there so do your research on the age of the cow that you want to have processed if you want veal or whatever it is that you want now all this would apply to a cow or to a pig or to a sheep or to a goat so think about the age of the cow and that will determine a lot of times the tenderness of an animal you don't want to butcher a 25 year old cow it's not going to be very tender it's not going to be that good so we've touched on what type of cow you might take to the butcher shop now let's talk about the process of taking them to the butcher shop and the cost of all this so you're going to load the cow up on the trailer if you don't have a trailer then you're going to have to hire somebody to haul that cow for you could probably hire somebody to haul a cow for i don't know 150 bucks something like that or have a family member or have your own truck and trailer or borrow a truck and trailer so we took our truck our trailer and our cow up to the butcher shop the butcher shop charges or the abattoir we're using the abattoir charges around 70 to dispatch the cow that is to kill the cow okay that's just plain and simple this cow will be walking it will be on hoof and it will not be on hoof it will be hanging very very shortly now something you also need to know is that most butcher shops will not take a cow that can't get up and walk off the trailer so if you've got a sick cow i say sick injured cull cow that just can't get up you're probably not going to be able to take that cow to the butcher shop now if you're taking that cow and having a vet take a look at it and they're giving it antibiotics and medications you're probably not going to want to take that cow to the butcher shop if you just worm that cow you don't want to take that cow to the butcher shop so heed the warnings on any medication that you might have given your cow it costs 70 to dispatch the cow it costs 92 cents per pound of hanging weight for this cow so this cow came in it was around 1200 to 1600 total pounds the hanging weight was 827 pounds there is your base price between 90 92 95 cents per pound of hanging weight now there are certain upgrades that you can make and you get to pick how much you want in hamburger how much you want in stakes how much you want to realize do you want t-bones and again there are some age restrictions on the t-bones you guys can do the research post a comment down there if you already know that so you decide what cuts that you want and no matter what cuts you want it's still that 92 to 95 cents per pound until you get into more processing so we chose to do several different things with this cow make a lot of hamburger if the steaks were still good on this older cow then we wanted to go ahead and get some steaks brisket everything oxtail which is the tail of the cow the tongue they're going to ask you all sorts of stuff are there any organ meats that you'd like to keep do you want to keep the liver do you want to keep the stomach do you what do you want to keep they're going to ask you all of these questions guys and there's going to be an upcharge for everything that you want to keep the more the butcher has to handle your meat the more expensive it's going to be so they have a tenderizing machine so you can cut off like flank steaks and steaks that aren't quite as good or cuts of meat that aren't quite as good and they run it through a tenderizer that's going to cost you just a little bit more you're going to have different values established so maybe 16 a pound for ribeye steaks maybe 5.75 cents per pound for hamburgers so you got to think about that there is value here for sure and there is value in taking your animal to a usda inspected facility both in the cleanliness department and in the resale department so that's something that you really really need to think of some butcher shops offer sausage so you can have kielbasa sausages made so we had about 50 pounds of our cow turned into sausage some of these butcher shops will have an upcharge so you can have your meat ground in a hamburger it stays in that base cost if you want to have your hamburger patties pattied out for you and they're all frozen together expect to pay an upcharge again over a dollar maybe a dollar five dollar ten per pound more seasoning so for the cabasa sausage i think it was a dollar and nine cents per pound to take my beef and to make beef sausage and that's for handling the meat and putting seasoning in there so these are all things that you really need to think about guys if you're gonna go back to the butcher shop after about two or three weeks this meat is going to hang in the cooler and age for about two to three weeks then they're going to go ahead and process it they're going to call you back and what you want to look for in your meat processor is whether they put it in vacuum sealed bags you want stuff that's going to last for two to three years if you possibly can most of the time if you're going to a good butcher shop a good abattoir a good slaughterhouse you're going to experience a nicely packaged piece of beef that's going to last in the freezer for one to two to maybe even three years so it's something that you really need to think about don't just go to a butcher shop that processes your meat and wraps it in foil or cellophane because it's not going to last in the freezer it's going to last about 6 months if you've got 827 pounds of meat it's just not going to last so it's either got to go really quickly or it's got to be packaged appropriately again a usda inspected facility for sure now there are a few other up charges that you need to think about and a few other things that you need to think about they're going to ask you whether you want to keep the bones well obviously we want to keep the bones because we want dog bones they're going to ask you about and also not only just dog bones to make our own beef stock our chick our beef stock our chicken stock anything that you can cook bones down and make beef stock beef broth for using on that traeger grill later on when you get ready to cook a brisket so think about that if you want to make stock for making soup in the wintertime you want to keep your bones in my opinion you want to keep your bones so that's part of that hanging weight and you're being charged for it anyway they might as well not throw it away you can use it on your place so we talked about choosing your cow we've talked about loading the cow up and taking it to the butcher we've talked about the price of what it cost 70 for the kill fee and 90 to 92 cents per pound is what my butcher is charging me now this price could fluctuate depending on the seasons and depending on demand so you really want to think about that we've also talked about what you want to keep what organ meats you want to keep what cuts of beef you want to keep how thick your steaks are going to be they're going to ask you all these questions there's going to be a bombardment of questions that come firing at you so you want to be prepared to answer those questions in the most appropriate manner again with an older cow like what we're processing probably are just going to get about 90 hamburger and we'll get some of the other cuts with a younger cow like a young steer that you've raised out you're going to get all these different cuts so you need to be prepared when you get to the butcher shop to tell them exactly what cuts of meat you also need to be prepared that it's going to take two to three weeks to have this animal processed you also need to be prepared that it's going to take up to a year for you to get into the butcher shop for you to get your animal on the schedule at the butcher shop this could take that animal over that 18-month mark and cause your animal and your food to be tougher so you need to plan way way ahead guys if you're considering raising your own food or if you're starting a small farm or homestead and you're wanting to start selling beef off your place so these are all little considerations that you need to have so the cow's been there for two to three weeks you're going to get a phone call you better have your ducks in a row so you get your phone call you take a bunch of totes up there and you start going to meet the people that are buying your beef and you want to drive to those people or have them all meet you right on the farm and get that beef before you have to put it in the freezer so get it scheduled with those folks if you're selling beef or if you've got family that's splitting the beef with you get that all settled too let everybody know foster good communication in this entire process and i tell you you won't regret it guys guys i hope you enjoyed this video please pound the like button subscribe the channel this is just some of the information that you're gonna find here on the stoney ridge farm as i learn i'll teach you and we'll all learn together and have some fun here on the farm thanks a lot we'll see you next time on the stoney ridge i gotta go move the [Music] cows