I had a bit of an unexpected trial run over the last few weeks. We had a heifer that was being weighed prior to being sent to slaughter fall over in our new state-of-the-art handling system. It was clear that she was injured, but she did manage to get back to her feet. She was obviously not well enough to be sent on a wagon to be slaughtered the next day, and the following day she could not get up unaided and she appeared to be in significant pain, so it was arranged that she would be home killed by the local knackerman, and then hung in a local farmers chiller.
I had ace Butchery Consultant Rich Summers coming up the following week, so it was arranged that he would help me butcher the first 5/6ths, and we would further age the undamaged hind quarter, and I would have a solo go at that. We set up the old farm office as a makeshift cutting room and had a long but really good day with Rich.
He powered through the ‘proper’ butchery and I steaked and diced behind him before an all hands on deck session to get the meat bagged and labeled before we handed it out to all the staff on the farm. Home killed meat can not be sold, but it was a great opportunity to see what one of our animals looked like on the hook, and what it tasted like, as well as to get some hands on butchery practice! The poor girl had a broken femur when we butchered her, so euthanasia was definitely the correct course of action.
Ten days later the undamaged hindquarter was collected and I had my first go at butchering solo! The initial breakdown was quite physical and some of the big muscles that form the topside, silverside and thick flank look a bit similar to an amateur which was a bit scary, but I was generally happy with how it went.
Again the meat was bagged up and split between all of us working on the farm.
It looked really good – a lovely colour, a nice fat level, and well set with having been hung a bit longer.
We’ve really enjoyed the bits we’ve eaten so far, and it has been good to be able to get a feel for how the meat aged. The whole process has been a great learning curve, so know I feel I understand much better how one of our beast will look broken up and what the body balance of the carcass is. Next I need to perfect some meat pie recipes to add some extra value to the diced meat!