[shearling]

A bit early but thinking ahead. Can anyone recommend a slaughterer in Somerset. I can butcher the meat but am not happy to 'do the deed' myself due to lack of experience. We do not intend to sell the meat to anyone else. Do they have to go to a slaughterhouse (if so can you recommend) or is there anyone who will come here (again any recommendations)? And are there (well stupid question as there must be ) regulations for home dispatch and butchery? Has anyone else tried it

[woollyval]

If home despatch only you can eat it....and you may find hanging it a problem as you will probably not have a cold room. There is also the problem of disposal of head etc
I am in Somerset and use C Snell at Chard. They are very helpful if its your first time, very knowlegable, very kind to the animals and its a small family run place. I use them as they are 20 mins away and have done so for years. I like my animals despatched quickly with minimum stress and fuss and cannot fault them. They are the slaughter house featured on River Cottage.
here are others such as Stillmans and Hopkins at Taunton but they are bigger and not so personal.

Hope that helps?

[shearling]

Is there any way I could keep the head and skin. I use skeletons and bones for teaching school children (cleaned up of course). We do not have our owncold room, but does it have to hang I was thinking of it being put straight into a freezer? Only a couple of sheep so for own use only.

[supplies for smallholders]

Sheep are normally hung for at least a week to relax the muscles and make the meat more tender.

[Fleecewife]

Hi shearling - you can certainly get the skin back for tanning.  Arrange with the slaughterhouse in advance so you can collect your skins as soon as the sheep have been slaughtered.  You need to get salt on them within 2 hours of death, sooner if possible, or the wool begins to 'slip' ie fall out.  Some slaughterhouses will dunk your skin in brine for you so you don't have to do it at home.  Once it's fully salted you can either send it off to be tanned, or you can do it at home.
For the head - it would be worth speaking to the vet at the slaughterhouse, again in advance, to see if there is a way by which you could get back the heads.  You might have to register with someone, or have your facilities inspected, but it should be possible somehow to take one home.  Once you've found out how to do it, do please let me know so I can do the same thing 

[shearling]

FW normally I just bury road kill. Mark where and leave for a couple of years but I always put non degradable sack underneath to collect small bones. I try to get as complete a skeleton as possible so that I can reconstruct. I boil them in washing powder, sometimes need to redo after a few years for the bigger bones as they get 'oily'. I spent some times in the back rooms of the Field museum in Chicago and they have a bug room. Basically wall-to-wall fish tanks filled with beetles (non-flying) that eat and reproduce, eat, reproduce... Some are the size of a giraffe. The rooms have a bin next to the door (for the use of as the stench is retching). I wonder if there is a maggot farmer that might be interested. I got a lot of my originals from a vet school and school children are amazed when seeing the horse head (died over 150 years ago) and compare with sheep etc ditto feet and femurs and scapula. Most of them think horse or ox are dinosaurs. I want to extend my collection and have more so that more school children get to see them.

[ellisr]

Hopkins is the slaughter house in Taunton that had very bad press and shut for a period just over 12 months ago
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_factory//2186//

[supplies for smallholders]

I got to say Im finding this thread rather disturbing....

I can just imagine your living room adorned with the bones of animals, whilst you chuckle devishly with a box of Daz in your hand as more soil stained bones boil on the stove.........

[shearling]

I got to say Im finding this thread rather disturbing....

I can just imagine your living room adorned with the bones of animals, whilst you chuckle devishly with a box of Daz in your hand as more soil stained bones boil on the stove.........



I am sorry it was not meant to be disturbing, and I certainly do not relish the death of any living creature. Its just that rather than bury a carcase I use it to teach children and adults about skeletal structures and how bodies work. It is important for very many children to see bones (other than dinosaurs) as most of those I have taught have never even seen a whole chicken - generally only out of a packet in breadcrumbs. It never ceases for them to marval at how most animals have the same bones but in different sizes or with slightly different characteristics for the muscles and sinus to attach and for blood supplies to flow through. It is part of a more general science and technology display and was part of the result of one of my masters degrees in teaching science when it was added to the national curriculum. The collection is housed at my home because the original LA school's resource centre was closed down and if I did not keep it would have been in a landfill, as would the future bones that I hope to extend and support the collection. I only use already dead animals and although I do have some domestic animal skeletons these came from a vet school. However, I am a bit of a hypocrite as our own pets when dead do not join the collection due to our sentimentality

[nails]

Shearling where are you exactly? i have 2 i use in somerset (Slaughter houses)

[shearling]

Near Minehead

[exmoorlady]

Chris Trott at bishops Lydeard is excellent for sheep and cattle.

[Smashy and gang]

Any suggestions for Oxfordshire?  Also - on the possibly controversial point of castrating, do slaughter houses usually accept non-castrated lambs for meat?  I thought they didn't but someone said recently they thought it was OK?

[daddymatty82]

where in oxfordshire?

[hughesy]

You shouldn't have a problem getting your lamb heads back, they are yours after all. The lamb abattoir I used to work at used to sell them. Very little if anything goes to waste.