Butchering Question - Page 1

OK- I'm sure this is a stupid question but here goes. Feel free to gently mock me. :)

For those of you who butcher whole cows, lambs or goats to feed your dogs:

Are there particular cuts that you do to make it easier to feed? I was asked how I wanted the animals butchered but I'm not sure what to ask for. I'm only familiar with what I request when I have a cow butchered for my consumption. ...and no, we won't be doing the butchering since my husband hated doing it as a kid.

Many thanks in advance for sharing your butchering wisdom.

Laura

From what I gather when the Cow is slaughtered in Halal. The holy Koran is recited as the animal is slaughtered gradually from the neck

The belief is that the soul goes directly to Allah


hope this helps

Cheers

ask them to "ground beef it" ...LOL..i don't know...sorry..

It depends...how or what do you normally feed your dogs?  Or maybe an easier question is how or what are you comfortable feeding?  (meaning ground, whole chunks, boneless meat, bone in meat, let them figure it out on their own, etc.)

"Or maybe an easier question is how or what are you comfortable feeding?  (meaning ground, whole chunks, boneless meat, bone in meat, let them figure it out on their own, etc.)."

I feed all of the above in terms of chicken, beef, and lamb. Goat is cubed since that's how it's sold at the farmer's market or East African grocery store by my house. Whole herring is cut up into pieces (or dog rolls on it even when frozen).

I get it butchered for human then get them to include the organs wrapped each individually for the dogs and also get the leg bones chopped to what they refer to soup cuts.

Presumably your local slaughterhouse is killing the animal for you? 
Simply ask them to butcher the carcase into the usual joints.
With all due respect, they'll be able to to it quicker and with far less hassle as they've got the knives, saws and counter tops to handle beasts.

With any animal, beef, sheep or pig or goat, there will be probably in the region of 30% that goes to the renderer under normal circumstances, such as spleen, tripe,lungs, pancreas, head (once the cheek meat has been removed) and intestines/contents and hide.

All you've got to do is remind them you want the ribs, vertebrae, tail and "trim." They'll know what you mean. 
You may want the hooves/trotters, and unless the head has to go off to a lab to be tested for scrapie or BSE,  you could ask them to split the skull, and that you also want the pluck (heart & lungs) diaphragm, pancreas, spleen and other offals as well as all the trim. 

If you ask, they'll bag all the category 3 by products separately for you if its for pet food. Don't forget to ask for the gullet/oesophagus and ears, muzzle. They're not under any obligation (in England, anyway) to let you have this stuff, but there have been derogations in the permissions necessary for category 3 ABP providing it's from animals passed fit for human consumption and the category 3 stuff is held separately from the main meats/offals.

Large bones they will be able to saw or split lengthways.  Ribs they can saw up into lengths of your choice. Skulls can be quartered.

If you supply a couple of gallon plastic containers, or large lidded buckets, an obliging abattoir owner may agree to keep the blood for you too. Blood is a good food, especially mixed with tripe. It will clot in the containers, you can pour off the serous fluid when it separates from the red cells. And it freezes well, so worth keeping hold of litre plastic ice cream tubs for easy storage of both blood plasma and the blood solids.

If you want to butcher 'fallen' stock for pet food, you may have to have the appropriate licence from the local Animal Health Veterinary Laboratory as it could be a special risk material, such as category 1 or 2 - you'd need to demonstrate that you have the facilities to cope with disposal of waste without contaminating the environment. 
Although the odd dead goat kid, lamb or piglet or placenta "on farm" shouldn't present too much of a problem, you could probably feed that whole without anybody knowing, provided you were sure it hadn't died of some nasty disease, in which case you probably wouldn't want to use it as petfood anyway.



 

@Pridhams - Many thanks for your thorough answer. I have a better understanding of what I need to ask for now. My in-laws have a farm so we'll be using their professional butcher/abattoir ...it's also their livestock so the animals are healthy (and humanely raised).