The slaughter day story.

We try to give our animals just one bad day.

One of the main things our customers want to know is that the animals are treated humanely. I was asked how slaughter day works, so here you go.

When I was a kid, slaughter day was always in October or November.  The main thing I remember about those early slaughter days was that it was always cold.  My job was to do a major part of the skinning and my hands would always be freezing. Slaughter day was always in the fall or early winter because that was needed to cool the carcass and let it dry age.  We would do the dry aging with the animal hanging in a tree. It would never make it the full 14 days. Usual amount was 1 to 7 days.  We would hang it high enough so that the coyotes or dog couldn’t get at it. The dog would jealously guard the carcass against any crows that might want a taste even though he couldn’t have some.

When the carcass was cooled out and even partially frozen, Pa would cut a quarter off and carry it in the house on his shoulder.  We would gather around the table and butcher that quarter.  There would be a lot of roasts and stew meat.  The little kids got to cut up the stew meat.  The bigger kids would do the wrapping and marking.  Pa would do the sawing.  My handwriting was never very good so I wasn’t allowed to do the wrapping or labeling.  I would fetch and carry things. Take up slack where needed. Steven sharpen this knife. Steven there is another stack of steaks to carry to the chest freezer.  Steven, help the little kids catch up on the stew meat cutting.  In my earliest memories of this, we didn’t have a meat grinder so there was not a lot of ground beef.  After we did get a meat grinder, we would take turns cranking it.  I am certain that I had to take more turns than anyone else, but that is probably false.  Grinding beef with that hand crank machine was WORK.

When I was a real little kid the killing part was or neighbor Johnny coming over to help and Pa cutting the animal’s throat.  It would bleed out very quickly.  If it was a pig it would usually give a squeal as the knife went in and that would be it.  It would be standing there chewing on some corn and then go SQUEAL and then be lying there bleeding great gouts of blood, breathing its last.  A cow wouldn’t usually make much sound at all but the procedure was the same.  Not as smooth as shooting in the head with a gun, but as smooth as Pa could make it at the time.  We didn’t own a gun.

After I got old enough to own a gun (I think I was 13 or 14) I or Pa shot the animal in the head and then slit its throat.  This is/was by far a better way.  The animal never knew what hit it. Standing there looking at you curiously or maybe eating some grain out of a bucket one second and then down and totally out of it the next instant. 

Shooting in the head while the animal is mildly curious is by far the best way of dispatching a food animal. The animal feels no pain and there is no chance of any adrenaline in the animal’s system.  I have been told by more than one butcher that adrenaline in the animal’s system at the time of death tends to make the meat tougher. This is covered quite well in the writeup by Temple Grandin that I mention a bit later in this document.

There is a small machine called a captive bolt that is usually used in slaughterhouses nowadays instead of a gun.  It basically drives a bolt into the animal’s brain instantaneously. It is operated by compressed air. If you have ever seen the movie ‘No Country For Old Men’, you have seen one in use. The bad guy tells the motorist ‘OK, now stand very still while I…’  Pop! And the guy is down.  It is used on cattle and hogs because it can be used over and over without worrying about bullets flying around in a closed space.

The butcher wants an instant death to an unstressed animal.  Not only because it is much more humane but because it makes the meat more tender and flavorful.  The best writeup I have seen about this is from a famous livestock handling person named Temple Grandin. Here is the link for that document. There are a LOT of cited references in this writeup though they aren’t computer links since the document was written in 1980 before computer links were in widespread use. It is written in simple language and is not hard to understand.  Temple Grandin has been a leader in gentle livestock handling for many years.  Almost every beef farmer I have ever met has at least heard of her and a few have met her.  Kind of a celebrity in the ranch and farming community.

How it works at North Pasture Farms. 

In order to pass USDA inspection, there needs to be a pre-death inspection to ensure that the animal is not sick or carrying a disease that makes it unfit for human consumption.  There also has to be a post-death inspection to ensure that the carcass is totally fit to eat, is not contaminated with e-coli or some other thing.

It is POSSIBLE to have the pre death inspection take place at the farm, but it is definitely not PRACTICAL or widespread.  I know of a mobile slaughter facility in Washington State but it is the only mobile facility I have ever heard of that is USDA inspected.  This data is a few years old so there are probably more mobile units around that I don’t know of.

There is also a well-known and legal practice used by many butchers where they kill the animal at the farm and then truck the carcass to the butcher shop.  The meat from this animal can only be used by the farmer himself.  I know of several farmers who do this for their own meat.  They also provide meat to some of their neighbors, friends and family. If their son or daughter gives them a big Christmas present valued the same as the portion of meat they received, nobody is going to kick up a fuss.  The farmer can also kill and butcher his own animals for his own use at any time, but that is most definitely not inspected. These practices are DEFINITELY not something that can be done in a for-sale setting.  Violating this law is a very good way of going out of business as a butcher or meat seller.   I include this so that none of you reading this starts getting any wild ideas…  

The bottom line currently is the animals have to be trucked to the butcher shop.  In our case, this is about 45 minutes away. The trucking usually occurs early in the morning.

I have the cattle in a nearby pasture for a day or three before shipping.  I sort off the ones that are going to town usually the day before they leave. This is a simple process but time consuming.  It includes walking behind them or through the herd and using a string as a fake electric fence to get a bunch of them that includes the ones going to town to go where I want. Then they are calmly sorted so the ones going to town are kept in an even closer pasture and the ones staying home are turned back out into the bigger pasture.  Depending on how much sorting there is to do and how lucky you are willing to be, it can go quick or slow.  The main thing is to be calm and do not get in a rush.  Cattle can run a lot faster than a person and are best handled slowly and conversationally.

Here is a 45 minute video on our you tube channel of me catching a batch of cattle for processing. 

Once they are in the close-up pasture, they stay there for the day, chilling out, eating more grass and getting used to the corral if they want.  Then the evening before they leave, they are put in the corral using the same procedure as above.

Once they go in the corral, I close the gate and make sure it is latched.

The next morning at about dawn, the trucker shows up and we load the cattle.  This usually takes about 3 to 5 minutes because we have a pretty good corral setup.  If there are two truckloads going, we might need to do some sorting and that takes a bit longer. It definitely helps a LOT to have a good cattle handling setup of corrals, some squeeze gates and a good place for the trailer to back up to.  I have ridden along with the trucker a time or six and some cattle loading scenarios can be pretty hair raising. There is no running or shouting at our place though the cattle are usually nervous about going into a strange trailer.  There is a system of squeeze gates such that the batch of cattle going to town finds themselves in smaller and smaller pens with the end pen having the trailer opening into it and a squeeze gate pushing them in.  Once one of them decides to go in, the rest usually go right in after it.

 We make the trip as stress free as possible.  We also give the animals a longish period of time (usually 18-20 hours) for them to get used to their new environment at the butcher shop.   This allows the adrenaline from their trip to get out of their system.  They are given water and a fairly quiet place to hang out and chew their cud while waiting. The pens have solid walls and are roofed so there aren’t a lot of distractions by their neighbors in the next pen or a hot sun beating down on them or cold winds blowing on them.  When I have checked up on them in the past, they are either standing there patiently or maybe lying down and chewing their cud. They also are not put in with a bunch of strange animals so they are still with their own ‘herd’ and that tends to calm them down considerably.

The next morning, they are taken through an alleyway to the killing floor.  The end of the alleyway has a door that they can’t see through so the first one goes through the alleyway and the door closes. When the first one is ‘done’, the next one is let in.

The animal comes into a totally strange place and before they have any time to figure out what is going on, they are bolted and down they go. The time between when the animal goes through that door and is bolted (killed) is usually about 10 seconds.  After the animal is killed and bled out, the operators of the killing floor hose down the place before the next animal is brought in so the blood smell is at a minimum.

It is admittedly a strange place for the animal and there is definitely some stress involved which is why the time they are in that space before death is kept to a minimum. There might be some kicking after death but the animal is most definitely out of it instantly.  

I imagine a similar experience would be if someone were abducted by aliens except that the aliens are just those humans that move you to new pasture every day. They shunt you into the spaceship and take you for a ride. A new, scary and different experience to be sure.  Then you are given a day to calm down.  You get to hang out with your buddies.  If you are high-strung and intelligent and have been reading the tabloids about alien abductions you might be pretty freaked out.  But since you can’t read and are not very smart anyway and you come from a long line of placid and accepting beings, you get used to it pretty quickly.  The next morning the aliens stand you in a line with your buddies.  You kind of wonder what is going on but one buddy is ahead of you and another behind you. You might be somewhat nervous but then you just had a ride in a spaceship so this is just another new thing. Then the front buddy goes through a door and disappears.  WTF?  You stand there wondering dumbly about this. This goes on for a few minutes.  Then the door opens and you go through looking for your buddy.  The place is steamy and smells like hot water and maybe disinfectant but you have no clue what disinfectant is.  You are just wondering what is going on when something hits you in the head and everything goes dark.

The animal is bolted and then its jugular vein is cut.  The operator calmly goes about hooking the carcass up so it can be hoisted up so that it bleeds out.

Most times the animal doesn’t have time to get excited but I would be lying if I told you that none of them are ever excited or afraid.  That does happen.  From the times I have observed I would say that about 1 in 7 or 8 REALLY don’t like being there and make sure you know about it.  These are usually the same animals that are very wild or skittish in the pasture.  You can tell who they are when you go out to check the cattle and move them to new pasture the first time they are at the farm.  They have their heads up and are moving at a trot to the other end of the pasture until they get to know you a bit.  They are also the ones you have to watch out for in the corral while loading.  They will run you over in a heartbeat if you don’t know what you are doing.  If you handle them as part of the group they usually don’t cause any trouble. Most of the farms that I deal with send these wild ones to town early.  They do not get a chance to reproduce unless they have some REALLY good other characteristics.

When I was a kid, wild and skittish beef cattle were much more prevalent than they are today.  Dairy cattle have been bred for docility for eons so they are usually much more friendly and gentle.  I was run over by one of our bulls when I was about 15.  He didn’t want to hurt me or I would probably not be here today. He most definitely did want to be back out in the pasture with his girlfriends and no punk kid was going to get in his way, yelling and waving his arms or not. He definitely wound up back with his girlfriends that day and I picked myself up out of the mud, glad I hadn’t been stepped on or squashed. We were more careful and moved much more slowly and calmly the next time we caught him. Back then (50 years ago) docility was just starting to be mentioned in beef breeding books and sire summaries.  Nowadays, it is one of the main things that farmers around here want in their herds.  Out West, where the animal has to deal with more predators, they want a more wild, alert animal so the western ranchers seem to pay less attention to it, at least in my opinion.

I am sure you have seen movies where they had beef carcasses on meat hooks and on an overhead rail.  That is so that the heavy carcass can be easily moved around. As the carcass is being bled out, it  goes on a rail from the initial killing place to the next place where skinning and gutting happens.  The guy in charge of dispatching the animals gets onto cleaning up the killing floor and getting the space ready for the next animal while further down the line they get onto skinning the animal, harvesting its organs and getting rid of the guts. 

Once this part is done, the carcass goes into a big cooler, still on the rail.  This is basically a refrigerated room.  I think about 34 degrees.  The carcass is in there drying and cooling for up to 14 days.  This is called dry aging.  Then the carcass goes to the cutting room where it is cut up into steaks, roasts, deboned and ground into ground beef and all the rest of it. Huge meat processing plants do what is called wet aging.  Wet aging is basically just taking the dry aging out of the equation.  This greatly speeds up the process but the quality of the meat is lower in my estimation.

Pigs are handled much the same way but since they are smaller, the process takes a bit less time for each of them. Pigs also don’t go through the dry aging process but are cut up as soon as the carcass is cooled sufficiently.

What about chickens?  

Chickens are done at a different facility and the procedure is different, mostly because they are smaller and have feathers.

The farmer loads up the chickens in cages that he gets from the processing facility the day before. Once loaded they are taken to the facility in the evening.  

Catching them from their chicken tractor is a fairly simple thing. They are kind of herded into a corner and then grabbed one by one and put into the transport cage.  If you hold a chicken so that his wings are close to his body and hold him kind of securely, he will calm right down.  Sometimes getting him into that position is a trial, but that is a different story.  Once in that position they look around and cluck a bit like they are wondering what they are doing moving around while 3 feet in the air and not even flapping their wings. 

About 10 of them go into each transport cage.  The cages are kept small enough so that one or two people can move them around. A chicken weighs about 8 pounds live weight.  Ten chickens at once is kind of heavy, but not too bad for a strong person or two less strong people. When I move these cages I try and always have someone at the other end of the cage because it works much better for the loading….

The cages are put in the back of a pickup or into a van or trailer and taken to the processing facility.  They are unloaded and the chickens stay there overnight, basically wondering what is going on, talking to each other.  A chicken is actually pretty calm unless something is actively chasing it with evil intent.  Or at least the chicken thinks it is evil intent… The shadow of a hawk flying over can bring about a VERY rapid and sudden exit by the chicken.

In the morning, the birds are taken out of their cages one at a time and put into killing cones upside down.  The cone keeps them calm because their wings are held to their sides. Their feet are behind them sticking up in the air.  The cones are hung on a rail similar to the rails the pigs and cattle carcasses are hung on but much smaller.  I would say they hang in their cones for anywhere from 10 seconds to 1 minute. During this time their blood goes to their head and that also tends to calm them down. They hang their looking around a bit and that is about it.

The killing man slices their throats while they are hanging there.  This usually takes about a half second per chicken.  I have never heard a chicken complain beforehand or even during the process.  They hang there looking around, then the man grabs their head and slices their head off in one swift motion. No time to get upset though I would guess it is quite a surprise for that instant…

When I was a kid we would catch the chicken with about a 6 foot piece of heavy wire with a narrow and then wide hook bent into the end.   You would come up behind the chicken and hook his foot and drag him to you while he is squawking and complaining.  Once you get him in your hands and in the carry position, he calms right down.  Then you pick up your hatchet and hold the chicken under one arm with the hatchet in the other hand.  Walk over to the chopping block.  By this time you have your hand around the chicken’s feet.  You drop the chicken while holding his feet.  He hangs there for an instant.  The blood goes to his head and he quits flapping in about 3 to 8 seconds.  You lay the front part of his body on the chopping block with his head outstretched and whack his head off with one stroke of the axe or hatchet.  It helps to be good with the hatchet.  This procedure becomes practiced and smooth after a short while.

OK, back to present day…

Once the carcass is bled out, the chicken goes into a hot water bath.  Not boiling but pretty darn hot.  You don’t want to cook the chicken but you want the water hot enough so that the feathers loosen up quickly.   You dunk the carcass in hot water once or twice for a few seconds and then he goes into the plucker.  The plucker is a machine that has rubber fingers.  It basically rolls the chicken around while the rubber fingers pull his feathers off.  The carcass is doused with more hot water while this is happening.  Fancier pluckers have hot water baths in them so you don’t have to dunk the chickens before sticking them in the plucker.

Once the plucking is done, there are quite often some pin feathers that need to be taken off.  Back in the day, this was a job us kids had to do.  Stand around with a chicken carcass picking off the very small feathers and hairs.  Once in a while if we were doing a lot of chickens at once, we would build a fire and singe the pin feathers off.  Pa would sometimes singe them off over a burner on the gas stove also.  I think pluckers are better than humans at getting off feathers because while there are still some pin feathers, it doesn’t seem to be nearly as big an operation as it used to be when I was a kid. Maybe that is just me, or maybe chickens have been evolved to not have as many pin feathers now, I don’t know.

After the pin feathers are gone, the carcass gets the guts taken out and goes into a cold water bath to cool.  Once it is cool enough, it is either cut up into its various parts, or inspected and packaged whole.

Back in the day, we would most often leave the chicken whole and roast him, cutting him apart after he was cooked and on the dinner table. 

When we did cut them up, we would save the chicken’s back and use it to make chicken soup.  Nowadays, most farmers let the backs go out with the guts.  We don’t do that.  We save them and sell them and if they don’t sell, (most don’t)  we donate them to a Wildlife Science Center that has a pack of wolves they are studying.  We also feed our outside kitties chicken backs.  They either eat the bones and all or they are very good at hiding the bones. I am not sure which.  I only know that  I have never seen a chicken back bone around after the kitties got it.

After cutting up, the various parts are bagged, labeled and frozen.  Then the whole process of selling and delivering starts.   If you want to hear about that, just let me know.

No worries.

SV