Re: [Blackbelly] Finishing Lambs: The Abbatoir
>By > happy mischance (long story), I ended up finding an elderly Mexican > gentleman who happens to work part time at the local butcher shop. He > is happy to come on-farm to do the slaughter and charges $15 for > kill, skin, and dress. This was basically the method used for the "hands on" harvest, but included simultaneously breaking the neck. The trainwreck occurred in catching the animals, which were in a horse stall, two guys in there cowboying around, catching the poor little buggers. I should have had a means of crowding the lambs, and should not have allowed what happened, but it was one of those things where I just didn't handle the situation. One of those life's lessons we've learned this year. We are building a new sheep barn, and I keep struggling with how to build containment for the quick, trauma-free dispatch of slaughter lambs, but our facility has not quite evolved to that point yet. I have a great opportunity to design that in, but as yet haven't even figured out how we are going to utilize the new building! Count yourself lucky on your kill charge...ours is $40, plus $6 for disposal fees...total to get three sheep processed...$240. And then they screwed up the cut and wrap... > My rams are sold either straight off an alfalfa/perennial rye grass > pasture or, in the winter, they eat alfalfa hay. They get no grain. I > will be growing my own hay starting next year and am still debating > the merits of straight grass versus the alfalfa/perennial rye grass > mixture. My sheep give me deep, guilt-evoking stares when I put a > bale of straight grass hay in their feeder. I think you have got a wonderful thing going with alfalfa and perennial rye! Sounds like the ideal balance of protein and energy. Our infertile soil has not been able to sustain rye or a good stand of legumes. We started on our fertility program 4 years ago and I understand it takes about 3 years for the effects of remineralization to begin showing. Sure enough, we've gone from large areas of exposed soil to solid turf and the grass-choking mats of oxeye daisy are gone. This year the soil will be able to "digest" a fairly large application of lime, which should start a cascade of reactions in the soil. I hauled in 50 spreader-loads of aged horse manure (spread on half the pasture) and overseeded with a "ruminant" grass mix, plus white clover and vetch (which shows some persistence in our weak soil). On top of that, I spread a generous quantity of chicory seed, which is great for mining the subsoil for minerals, tolerates poor soil and drought, and manages a protein level in the 20-24% range! So not only do you have wonderful sheepies, you also have wonderful soil! It seems that all the things that create "artisan" quality meat also create healthy animals and healthy soils, which in turn sequester huge amounts of carbon, for a healthier earth...What a grand plan! Barb ___ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
Re: [Blackbelly] Finishing Lambs: The Abbatoir
Barb, it is always so great to have these kind of discussions. You will single-handedly elevate all of us to an "artisanal" way of thinking. Thanks for sharing your info. Now I'll share mine, in hopes that you can find a similar slaughter person in your neighborhood. Having had the same bad experience with the nearest abattoir (30 minutes from me), two years ago I vowed to use on-farm slaughter. By happy mischance (long story), I ended up finding an elderly Mexican gentleman who happens to work part time at the local butcher shop. He is happy to come on-farm to do the slaughter and charges $15 for kill, skin, and dress. For my raw-meat customers, he also cuts right there and pops the meat into their baggies (but they pay him extra for that service). For my lamb clients, he takes the carcass back to the butcher shop and uses the cutting instructions that I've received from my clients. I probably will have to give up sheep farming if my old guy ever retires or, god forbid, dies. He does a humane kill with a sharp knife cutting the jugular. I hold the animal while it bleeds out and there is never any struggle. I take a hanging weight before the carcass is dressed (which is what I base my price on), and my 9-month lambs weigh about 90 lb and yield about 40-45 lb cut and wrapped. I haven't had the luxury of eating any of the prime lamb that I sell; I eat the 2-year-old ram meat. It tastes divine, and the meat itself is very tender. I find that the connective tissue is tough, however. My lamb customers rave about the meat and put deposits on the next lambing before I even have it scheduled. My rams are sold either straight off an alfalfa/perennial rye grass pasture or, in the winter, they eat alfalfa hay. They get no grain. I will be growing my own hay starting next year and am still debating the merits of straight grass versus the alfalfa/perennial rye grass mixture. My sheep give me deep, guilt-evoking stares when I put a bale of straight grass hay in their feeder. Carol At 11:38 AM 9/28/2007, you wrote: Carol Elkins Critterhaven--Registered Barbados Blackbelly Hair Sheep (no shear, no dock, no fuss) Pueblo, Colorado http://www.critterhaven.biz T-shirts, mugs, caps, and more at the Barbados Blackbelly Online Store http://www.cafepress.com/blackbellysheep ___ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
[Blackbelly] Finishing Lambs: The Abbatoir
Imagine putting ten months of tender loving care, not to mention feed and management and other resources into raising a gorgeous, perfectly finished blackbelly lamb, then having all your work ruined in the 30 seconds prior to slaughter...or worse yet, getting packages back from the butcher labelled "pork steaks!" Or "pork shoulder roast!" Earlier this summer, we were preparing to have three wethers slaughtered on the farm. The mobile slaughter truck pulled in, and behind it, a neighbor, whom I hadn't seen in a long time (years). The slaughter guy talked me into killing the lambs in a manner that required handling. What ensued was a sheep rodeo, with my neighbor launching enthusiastally into the bedlam, apparently having fun making it worse, and me stupidly not running his *ss off the property. The animals were thoroughly traumatized. Who knows what happens when you haul the poor little buggers to the butcher instead of having them dropped on the farm without knowing terror? Well, the proof of the pudding was in the eating. The meat was tough. Tasty and delicious, but tough. The last three to be harvested were shot on the farm within seconds of each other and completely without alarm. These three were also the ones that received all that tasty calcium rich alfalfa, and the meat surpassed every expectation of tenderness and flavor! But get this...there was an older ram slaughtered at the same time as the two wethers. Instructions were to grind, and this would likely be fed to our dog. When we got our order, we discovered that ALL the ground meat, from two prime wethers AND all the mutton, had been tossed into the same box. To top that off, we received several packages of steaks, which I never order...just simple chops, roasts, and ground. BUT that's not the worst of it!!! Those steaks were labelled PORK STEAK and some packages were labelled PORK SHOULDER ROAST!!! Now, if I had SOLD any of those animals, from the rodeo'd lambs to the mis-labelled, mis-processed animals, I would have had some very irate customers on my hands! But that's not the only problem. I worked my tail off and probably ended up spending close to $6 a pound to raise those animals and have them processed, and all my work was in theory wasted, by a careless butcher. We lose control of the whole process when we hand off the animal to the butcher! Lots of us don't have any control over where we must send the animals, but here in our area, we have at least six abbatoirs, three of which are USDA inspected and one is certified organic. The custom shop has lost our custom, but now we are faced with having to haul our animals to a USDA plant and await the result of having shipped our naieve little farm lambs off to a packing plant. Something tells me that some of these abbatoirs are very much behind the curve when it comes to awareness of the current groundswell of concern about buying local products as well as grass-fed and organic. Doing anything less than a first class job of butchering can ruin a year's worth of the farmer's work and literally wreck his customer base. We fight the "establishment" with our exceptional but non-standard hair sheep. If we are not in partnership with the abbatoir, we seem to be wasting our time, trying to attain "artisanal" quality in the finished product. I am not sure what I am going to do next season, but it will almost certainly involve hauling the animals in. Probably the best I can do is put the best "finish" possible on the lambs and hope that the trip won't corrupt the finished product. Until we get these details ironed out, I will always have some concern that our "finished product" will vary too widely in quality. Regards, Barb Lee Blacklocust Farm Registered American Blackbelly Sheep http://www.blacklocustfarm.net ___ This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
