In loving memory of Kenis D. Keathley 6/4/81 - 3/27/22 Loving father, husband, brother, friend and firewood hoarder Rest in peace, Dexterday

Butchery

Discussion in 'The Game Room' started by BCB, Jun 20, 2020.

  1. BCB

    BCB

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  2. lukem

    lukem

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    Some of my in-laws and I have started doing our own butchering. This wasn't our first choice, but Covid19 has left us with extra hogs and impossible to find appointments at the local processing houses. Market price on pork is way down and we don't want to take a big loss.

    We (mostly my BILs) build a walk-in cooler out of some pallet racking, OSB, pink board, and window AC unit. Has no issue holding 33-35 degrees when it is well into the 80's outside. Built a skinning cradle out of some stainless. Got powered saw to cut down the spine (kind like a recip saw with huge blade) from a recently deceased home butcher. Restored a band-saw out of a grocery store....have a big 220VAC meat grinder we are getting ready to restore.

    Two weeks ago we put down, skinned, halved, and hung two hogs. Last weekend the 6 of us processed them. Took about 3 hours start to finish.

    Got a couple sides and a couple hams brining now....will cold smoke this Saturday AM for 3-4 hours.

    We have 8 hogs left to do in the next few weeks. I think we may try a beef this fall.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2020
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  3. Chazsbetterhalf

    Chazsbetterhalf

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    Cool. Show us your setup if you get the chance. I don't know if you can legally sell the meat but what are you going to do with it all?
     
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  4. lukem

    lukem

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    Split it with the family. Everyone has a lot of freezer space.
     
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  5. jrider

    jrider

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    Nice. My dad was self taught but passed it on to us. There’s not much to processing pigs. Once you get comfortable, 6 of you will be able to more than cut that time in half.
     
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  6. lukem

    lukem

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    That was our first one ever for any of us....definitely room room to speed things up.
     
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  7. jrider

    jrider

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    As with most things, you’ll be amazed at how much faster you can do it with enough practice. Good luck with it all. Nothing like processing all of your own meat!
     
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  8. CoachSchaller

    CoachSchaller

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    We are dealing with a shortage of appointments at local processing places. We normally get a side of beef every year from a farmer in my church. With family and friends we often get two. This year we could get three steers, but we can't get appointments. The three places in the area are booking over a year in advance. We just got a hog. We could only get two steers in for processing instead of three, and not into our preferred butcher. My sister's family and mine are splitting a half instead of a whole steer. Would have been a great time to start up a new meat processing place.
     
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  9. Smokinpiney

    Smokinpiney

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    Do you guys have a cool bot or some other type of temp controller to trick the window unit into cooling that low?
     
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  10. lukem

    lukem

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    Yeah. Can't remember the brand, but same thing.
     
  11. Smokinpiney

    Smokinpiney

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    If you happen to remember the brand please let me know. Not sure I really want to drop $350 on the coolbot just yet
     
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  12. lukem

    lukem

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    This was like $40. I'll go take a look and let you know.
     
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  13. lukem

    lukem

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    Pretty sure it was this one:

     
  14. Smokinpiney

    Smokinpiney

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    That's the cheaper temp controller I was looking at but I think another probe needs to be wired in to allow the ac unit to "defrost" before the coils freeze up.
     
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  15. lukem

    lukem

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    We run fan on all the time and have a light bulb that this init turns on to trick the AC unit into thinking it is hot in the cooler. Running the fan all the time prevents freeze up.
     
  16. Smokinpiney

    Smokinpiney

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    lukem Gotcha! Thanks for the info bud. Hoping to get working on my walk in this coming week. Season starts on the 12th!
     
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  17. lukem

    lukem

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    We did 3 whole hogs today from hanging in the cooler to packaged in the freezer in about 3.5 hours. We didn't grind anything today though, so not a fair comparison to last time....but we are way faster. Same crew. We have a pretty good system down now....one man on bandsaw, one man breaking down side and loin, couple guys trimming/boning for grind, couple guys combing bone dust and packaging.

    We are still pretty slow getting them off the hoof and into the cooler....need to work on that part some more.
     
  18. JackHammer

    JackHammer

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    I have about 50 chickens and I raise extras in the incubator. I have done meat birds and it works pretty well. I figure that I will breed them to my liking and cull the extras for meat. Right now I have brahmas, polish, speckled sussex, buckeyes, and a few other breeds.

    This is my setup that I copied from YouTube.
    20200718_070632.jpg
     
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  19. jrider

    jrider

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    What’s the pot just to the left of the table for?
     
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  20. CoachSchaller

    CoachSchaller

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    Plucking!