Wasn’t sure if this is the right board or not but here goes. What is the going rate for a mobile kill wagon in your area? Cutting and curing our own, I haven’t had a wagon out here in years. This year we had some extra pigs and the buyers needed that service from the meat cutter. The big surprise was the night before they called and wanted $175 cash per head before getting started. I normally hear $50 - $75 per head and that gets added onto the customer bill when they pick up their meat. Maybe a few more bucks if it’s a long drive with fuel cost. I anchored that right up and then they wanted to negotiate the price all the way down to $60 a head cash. Hackles up, still pulled the plug, then called my customers and explained why the deal had to be called off, thankfully they all understood and were happy with the decision. How does this process work in your area? Owl
Never heard of such a thing, don’t think it exists around here. But with good customer service and value I would think you’d have all the work you could handle. We are terrible short of custom meat lockers in a huge area around here. Most ranchers have one or two days scheduled yearly and if they don’t have a critter ready they go to the back of the line. Do these mobile outfitts do beefs?
Seemed like most small towns in our rural area had privately owned lockers that did beef, pork, lamb and deer, but they are really few and far between now. Fewer and fewer small landowner/stockmen around here so I suppose the need is not as great and people buy their meat from the market. Definitely a sign of the times and a shift in how we live.
Here we have mobile chicken / turkey processors. 75 cents to 1 per bird well worth cost in 24 foot trailer. This makes sense, deer cow pigs go to processing place.
I am not too political correct & will just lay out the “gross” part in po’ man’s terms for the first part. There are a couple lockers around here that will come to the farm, kill the beast, gut it, skin it & remove the noggin’ then haul it to their business to process it. The beasts owner is responsible for disposing of the left behind bits & pieces. Saves the processor a lot of headache ( with inspector ) & disposal fees ( this saving the customer $$$ ) Astronomical insurance rates have eliminated most of these folks, astronomical disposal fees are causing a lot of smaller lockers to shutter as well. Some lockers here won’t process sheep because of the ridiculously high disposal rates for the left overs. I have never seen/heard of a mobile butcher processing on the farm. Just folks processing their own stuff. As a kid we had a neighbor that built their own cinder block butcher shack, complete with walk in freezer. We helped process deer, sheep, hogs & beef. When I was a kid it was not uncommon to see a pickup driving down the road with a hog or 2 or a beef hanging from a stantion on the back of a pickup headed to the locker. As a side note, the left lane on the interstate around here is often called the Montfort Lane because of the meat haulers haulers azz into Chicago to the processing plants back in the day.
In past times every small town around here had their own locker. There’s definitely a need right here close. I’m on the village board and in the last couple years we’ve been approached twice by people wanting to start a locker, but can’t make it happen.
I’d appreciate that, thank you. We looked into this some years back. The regulations to get started and associated costs are unimaginable. It was stupid. This isn’t on site processing. Just, knock them in the head, undress and hollow them out. Prepped and taken back to the packing house to hang and be processed. They’ll come and get anything on four legs, no matter how big. Birds and small stuff like rabbits and guinea pigs go the chicken killers, no mobile, drop off only. Processing fee at the packing house is $1.09 a pound for plain cut and wrap, up to $4.65 a pound for fancy meat sticks and summer sausage. Small scale custom cutting type shops. I’m glad we were fortunate when all the kids and their friends were growing, we had and processed our own. I learned young and paid attention. A growing family today could rack up a bill in a hurry. Owl
