[CloverBee]

After another expensive shop, and disappointment in the quality of meat available (didn't buy much, if it isn't Welsh or British at the very least, I don't buy it), me and OH have been thinking...
We are getting on top of our overgrown holding now. Greenhouses cleared and being prepped for veg to go in, the five hives are doing well, hens are next on the list for supplying us with eggs and we'd like to produce some meat for our own use. The cost of doing something isn't a problem, we'd rather have quality home reared meat than pay for the unknown stuff. We have the sheep to start, and may get cattle later on.
Now, I'm thinking way ahead, but how do you go about it? Do they get slaughtered and butchered how you want at the  abattoir? Or do you have to ask a butcher to collect and do it for you? Is there anywhere that does chickens? Or anyone who comes to do that for you? I'm not squeamish to do that myself, but it's been a while and I'm on the waiting list for a course, because I wouldn't want to cause unnecessary suffering, so won't be attempting it until I've had training again. If any one could point me in the direction of information resources or places to consider in/near Pembrokeshire, I'd be very grateful 

[Richmond]

Don't know what's available in your area but here we luckily have a choice of two local abattoirs. We used to transport animals ourselves to slaughter but nowadays our butcher comes to collect them from our holding and takes them to the abattoir. Once the carcasses are back at his shop we go over to have a look at them and discuss how we want them cut up.

As for poultry I strongly advise you learn to process birds yourself. It's much cheaper than getting them done by someone else. Not all butchers will do private poultry processing anyway. It's good to hear you have already booked yourself on a course.

[twizzel]

We are very lucky too and have a couple of abattoirs within a 10 mile radius that do private kills, and then a few options for butchers too. Find a butcher you like and trust, who treats your meat with the respect it deserves. We sacked off one butcher who kept putting the price up, cocked up our cutting lists to the point we were missing joints, lambs were cut wrong so our customers didn’t get what they asked for, and cut everything on a band saw. Not good. Now we have a great butcher who cuts traditionally, great service, hangs our meat for the right amount of time. Our abattoir delivers the carcasses to the butcher, so we drop off live lambs and then pick them up from the butcher boxed and ready to be delivered.


A word of warning with cattle, they sound idyllic but are a totally different kettle of fish to sheep. Research what tb testing area you are in, and be prepared to spend a fair whack of money on handling, as vets won’t treat your cattle if not appropriately restrained (rightly so). And look at your land, cattle will make a fair mess in winter.

[Womble]

OK, re poultry slaughter, we've done it three ways, results as follows:

1) Done ourselves. Only recommended if you aren't squeamish, and have time on your hands. For your own use, you can actually save a lot of time if you just skin and then joint the birds rather than plucking them. Honestly, though I'm glad I did it myself once, after that first time I figured I had better things to do with my time. I'd do turkeys this way again, but not chickens or ducks.

2) Local poultry abattoir. An interesting experience. The vet made me fill out a load of paperwork which included a box for "% mortality". I wrote "none". The vet then explained to me what % mortality was, and how to calculate it. I eventually managed to explain to him that I knew that, but we bought 40 day old chicks, and I was here with 40 adult birds. He eventually said "ok, I don't believe you, but let's go look at them". He looked in the crates in the trailer and just said "wow! they have feathers!". Overall not a great experience because they were bigger birds than the abattoir had expected, and I think they had trouble processing them. Also when I turned up to collect them at the allotted hour there was nobody to be seen, and I had to basically break into the fridge, find my birds and then steal them. The place went bust shortly after that.

3) Local game dealer / processor. This was the best experience actually. I turned up with the birds in the back of our livestock trailer, which I left there overnight. The birds were then killed first thing in the morning, processed and then collected frozen a couple of days later. Not cheap, but worth it.

[chrismahon]

Chickens are quite simple (if you don't create any health issues) and can be gutted easily and plucked with a fairly simple machine. The key point is the bird has to be hot for the feathers to fall out. Plunged into 60C water I think? Pick a good meat breed and to save effort buy as week old chicks. Save going down the breeding route until you have more experience.


We used to buy two Jacob lambs and rear them for 5 months before slaughter by the local butcher. We actually had too much meat, but you can't keep just one lamb.


Rearing cattle sounds like a nightmare and best avoided I think.


As to selling your produce I think the regulations are now too complicated to make it worth the effort. Find a decent local producer and buy in bulk. Purchase a top quality chest freezer, so to gauge that you are looking for E rated (the old A++) with an autonomy (time without power before the contents begin to warm- not get too warm, which is much later) of at least 25 hours. That is a measure of the insulation. quality.

[CloverBee]

Brilliant, thanks for all your advice guys. Lots of food for thought there! We are the kind of people that really analyse stuff before going ahead with it, so it's all appreciated. As we have the land we were wondering if it's something to do ourselves, the other option is rework the household budget and find a decent local butcher and buy already done! This is hard as we are rural and work stupid hours with our jobs, and they are usually closed by the time we are done. Jobs are something else to factor in the doing stock ourselves route.
Thanks again for helping with my musings before any commitments are made!

[PipKelpy]

Re cattle, why folk say they are a nightmare is beyond me!

They arent, to me they are like dogs, depends on how YOU handle them.

Mum used to have some right nutters, Limousine X!

Me? I have a different opinion, nasty and they go!

The ones I have reared and eaten, some have been bought as calves, reared on a bucket, halter trained, tied trained, so when TB tested, they are tied to a gate and stand calmly. Bullocks were castrated (by vet) by being tied to a gate and the gate pushed in on them to restrain them. (Our gates, depending on which set of hinges they hang on, go different directions for different purposes). Calves that were born here, though reared by their mums, I have still halter trained, we're currently eating Effy!

Cattle ARE fun! Yes, they can be ockered, but buy a calf in and rear it. Buy 2 so it has company. If there is a dairy farmer nearby, try and get a.couple of calves off them. I have reared Brown Swiss X twice, the first one I took to 29months, he was magnificent! He filled several freezers! The 2nd one, I sold half as we still had some of the 1st one left.

Speak to your vet, mine are happy with my setup, animals are quiet.

But to be honest, you DON'T want ANY animal that looks at you and thinks target practice. Would you have a dangerous dog?

[twizzel]

Re cattle, why folk say they are a nightmare is beyond me!

They arent, to me they are like dogs, depends on how YOU handle them.

Mum used to have some right nutters, Limousine X!

Me? I have a different opinion, nasty and they go!

The ones I have reared and eaten, some have been bought as calves, reared on a bucket, halter trained, tied trained, so when TB tested, they are tied to a gate and stand calmly. Bullocks were castrated (by vet) by being tied to a gate and the gate pushed in on them to restrain them. (Our gates, depending on which set of hinges they hang on, go different directions for different purposes). Calves that were born here, though reared by their mums, I have still halter trained, we're currently eating Effy!

Cattle ARE fun! Yes, they can be ockered, but buy a calf in and rear it. Buy 2 so it has company. If there is a dairy farmer nearby, try and get a.couple of calves off them. I have reared Brown Swiss X twice, the first one I took to 29months, he was magnificent! He filled several freezers! The 2nd one, I sold half as we still had some of the 1st one left.

Speak to your vet, mine are happy with my setup, animals are quiet.

But to be honest, you DON'T want ANY animal that looks at you and thinks target practice. Would you have a dangerous dog?

Cattle just need a bit more consideration than sheep, in terms of handling. We have a few ways of restraining cattle here- a full handling system with crush, a calving gate - both of which work very well, and we have restrained behind a normal gate although this isn’t ideal and quite often led to me getting a squished hand or OH getting reversed into and trodden on.


A few bucket calves would be a good place to start. And a chat with the vet to see what they expect handling wise.


And not all limmys are nutters. We’ve got a herd of them 

[Shropshirelass]

It's nice to hear a few peoples different experiences in handling & keeping cattle. Which is encouraging me to hopefully get my own eventually, alongside a few pigs to go with the sheep.

I'm not a newbie myself, I'm actually a 4th generation farmer on the same family farm, but I'm pretty certain our family were mostly farmers back past that as well. Personally I've grown up on a mixed beef, dairy & sheep farm with the occasional batch of pigs being reared when I was a kid back in sty's. We gave up dairy roughly 30 years ago & then my uncle focussed on beef & lamb, dads never wanted to farm & its skipped a generation & here I am farming with my cousin in our 20s & 30s. I run a mixed flock of waterfowl & poultry ranging from Quail, Hens, Ducks & Geese, alongside approx 45 pedigree Clun & Badgerface sheep as well as working full time.

We sell all our eggs & meat direct to customer, our poultry we do ourselves with a freind who's a local fully trained slaughterman & butcher & lamb at a local abattoir & butcher 6 miles down the road. To sell the meat you do have to be council approved with a food hygiene rating certificate, which was really easy following their guidance & I spoke to them about doing our poultry & the scary thing is they said in theory you can do upto 10,000 birds yourself per year without being classed as a poultry processing plant 

Things like eggs, honey & veg you can sell at local markets & at you're farm gate direct to customers as long as it's not going into shops or restaurants & the eggs have to if I remember right, will have to double check be sold as ungraded if selling at market but this only applies to hen eggs. The meats pretty easy to sort too as long as you have a good safe, clean area to store produce separately from customers & going through local butchers & abattoirs ensures traceability. I did look at using other butchers as opposed to the ones that the abattoir own as they supply to other butchers in the area & some would collect or have it delivered. But it's worth doing you're research & costing things out & we found that all butchers will cut their carcasses in slightly different ways & the prices did vary for doing it for you. Know what cuts of meat you want off you're animals & what you're customers want, a lot of people won't sell as individual cuts & just sell as half boxes as customers can be fussy & you get a lot of waste. It's like I'm not a butcher & went & asked butchers about the best way to cut down a lamb into joints & they told me & said "Say if you have a customer wanting a couple of racks of lamb & some lamb chops & you only kill 1 lamb - you can't supply the customer with both as the chops make up a rack of lamb & their just not cut up." & " If you want a breast of lamb, lamb mince & diced lamb you can only have 2 off 1 animal as the breast meat normally is used for all 3 cuts."  - If that makes sense? We do sell individual cuts to customers as well as meat boxes but I never send just 1 animal to slaughter on its own, personally I don't think its fair on the animal from a welfare point of view & it's not cost effective, we also get the skins & horns back & always ask for the offal back to sell with the meat & you do have to get a specific licence to get the skins & horns back to sell as rugs & to crafts people & have to apply via APHA (Defra). But I'd rather get as much use out of the carcass that I can & make as much earnings out of it as I can. Also now to send animals for slaughter or to sell at most markets in case they enter the food chain you have to do a Veterinary assertaition with you're vets every year.

Personally if you're going down the livestock route I'd say sheep are a good easy starting point & start off with about 4-6 ewes & a ram or borrow a ram for lambing as you'll have to keep him separate after lambing, unless you want random births throughout the year which isn't fair on the sheep or you really. Most breeds lamb between December & May - sometimes in June & you can get Dorsets which can produce 2 crops of lambs per year. Do you're research & look at the different breeds & their temperaments & how high maintenance they are, the longwool breeds need more work like tail dagging & keeping clean in winter, the hill breeds are hardier but slower growing & tend to be more wild & flighty & harder to handle & like escaping ect. I wouldn't start by buying in lambs if starting with sheep - it's more time & cost effective to get a good breeding flock & learn off a local farmer. Make sure you apply for a holding number & a flock book number - bear in mind if you want other species you also have to have a separate pig & cattle herd numbers ect for those species. Work out what you need, e.g sheep hurdles & trailer & how you plan to do things like shearing & lambing ect

Cattle I'd love to do my own, but there's a lot more red tape & paperwork & even though we have suitable housing & grazing. You need bigger & more expensive equipment & you do need to know what you're doing with them as their big animals that can cause a lot of damage. The same applies to pigs with regards to handling & also they are very destructive so you need a secure set up & unlike sheep & cattle they can't be entirely grass reared like some breeds of sheep & cattle, so they need some type of feed every day.

Hope this helps.