Butchering Question

[Dozer45]

I'm very new to raising our own beef, only did it once, so I'm not to sure about all the ins and outs of having them processed but I have a few questions. To make a long story short our neighbors, who  are known to be kinda shady, were feeding out a couple of steers for some other folks. One day just is casual conversation he told us how he was having the the guys with the refrigerated truck out in the morning to take care of one of the steers and haul him a couple towns over to the butcher, about a 30-45 in drive.
Well the next day we were outside irrigating and noticed they had the steer strung up by the tractor bleeding him out, without gutting him they dropped the steer in the back of a pickup and drove off, the weather was about 80 degrees or so. Again this evening the same process happened again with the other steer. I guess my question is, can you simply kill a steer bleed em out, gut em and haul em off to be processed? That doesn't sound to safe to me... especially  in the first steer which was not even gutted out.

 

[ruhtram]

I would think you would want to do that right away

 

[knabe]

lots of guys do this.  they haul them to the butcher where they can age them.  usually they strip out all the offal, skin them. the meat is not for resale typically.

 

[kkomma]

My family has owned and run a Meat Processing plant for 30 years. The safest and best operations take animals to a facility live to process them as fast as possible. If you don't have a trailer, a neighbor does. As for bleeding, that is an important first step to prevent the meat from souring. The problem is the carcass retains heat at a spoilage temperature. They need to be skinned and cooled as quickly as possible. What people fail to realize is that the heat from the pavement and translates through the bed of the truck and can spoil meat that way. We have a lot of trouble with hunters, bringing an animal in during 90 degree weather and riding on the highway for an hour in the back of a pickup and expecting the meat to be good. If someone is forced to do this method of butchering the best plan is to do it when its early and cool to give more time to prevent spoilage and get it to the processor within 20 minutes.

 

[willow]

Dozer45, there are a couple really good refer trucks in our area that come out and do the slaughtering and hauling for you.  They come right to our place do the deed and then take the animal inside their truck to the butcher'.  If you need names and number PM me and I will get them for you.  I would never, ever suggest that someone slaughter a beef, not gut it, and then haul it anywhere in our heat. 

 

[RidinHeifer]

That's why we slaughter in the winter.  We kill, bleed out, skin and remove head then gut as it is lifted up by a tractor.  Roll the guts right into the skidsteer bucket.  Then split carcass...for the cooler we used we had split where we ribbed it too...I really enjoy butchering, but I guess I'm weird!

 

[Doc]

Around here the steer has to be alive when delivered to the processor. Deer, not so much.

 

[Dozer45]

Dozer45, there are a couple really good refer trucks in our area that come out and do the slaughtering and hauling for you.  They come right to our place do the deed and then take the animal inside their truck to the butcher'.  If you need names and number PM me and I will get them for you.  I would never, ever suggest that someone slaughter a beef, not gut it, and then haul it anywhere in our heat. 

Thanks Willow we used one of them on our steer! My question was more about how my neighbors were doing theirs, didn't sound very clean to me

 

[hamburgman]

In their case opening the carcass and gutting it then driving down the road would be less clean than the method they used.  From my meat science class experience I would say killing and chilling asap as mentioned earlier is ideal, so my critter would be in a refer truck or killed at the plant.

 

[djbsimmy]

Can I add another question to this thread,  are heifers more tender then steers?  Was recently told this by our auctioneer

 

[leanbeef]

I wouldn't think heifers would necessarily be more tender than steers...not as a hard and fast rule at least. The main factors determining quality grade, tenderness, and flavor are genetics, management (mainly length of time on feed) & meat preparation methods & techniques. The information you got may be regarding the fact that heifers, in general, will finish earlier and/or be a little fatter than their steer contemporaries, and those factors do affect tenderness. So the same animal, as a heifer, might be more tender than that animal would be as a steer, but by no means would all heifers be more tender than all steers.