Raising Meat Cattle/Sheep/Goats - Off the wall question?

Question

I live in michigan. Where/who do you sell these animals to? I've looked under slaughterhouses and meat packing, but cannot find anything. Looking for a "on the hoof" place - so they are alive when you drop them off .. lol (easy way out)

Just wondering - thought about this for awhile.

Answer 1

try your local auction barn

Answer 2

Look under Stockyards.

Answer 3

Local  butcher shop would probably do it for  you.    Worst case find a farmer that raise beef and call them for advise.

Answer 4

This serriously depends on where you live, and what kind of stock is normally sold around you.  

Beef cattle are easy.  They are often sold at stock auction houses.  Sometimes they are sold dirrectly to a producer.  I use to live near a beef jerky/peperoine/sausage maker.  Almost all the close beef cattle were sold directly to the plant.

Sheep usually go to slaughter houses which specialize in them, and often only at certain times of the year.  Christmas, and Easter being major times for sheep to be butchered.

There are certain regulations about mixing the carcasses of different types of animals.  Slaughterhouses will usually run the animals through in this order:  Cows, sheep, pigs.  Things are cleaned up and sterilized between each different breed of animal.  The big commercial slaughterhouse usually only take one type of animal, and everything is specialized to handle just that type of animal.

Meat goats are a whole 'nother critter.  Many slaughterhouses will not deal with them at all.  It's because of the rules about what they can, and cannot do with the animals offal.  Basically it cannot be mixed with the offal from other animals.  They are kept separate.  Nobody wants an extra bin for goat offal.

Most meat goats in the U.S. are sold dirrectly to the customers.  Very often they are being butchered according to the religious beliefs of that person.  Very few goats make it to slaughter houses.  There is one slaugther house back East now owned by a Co-op of goat and sheep farmers who ship their stock there for processing, and the butchered animals are then sold to places like New York.

There is also a meat goat Co-op here on the West coast, which pools all the goats together, and trucks them to California, and sells them to one butcher.  He is a Muslim, and the goats are butchered so they are Halal (good) according to the Islamic religion.

Beef cattle are usually born in open range areas.  Once big enough to wean, they are rounded up, and shipped off to big stockyards, where they are fed masses of grain, and fattened for butcher.  They are then trucked dirrectly to the slaughterhouse.

Pigs are raised in factory farms, usually in very small pens, and then shipped dirrectly to the slaughter house, when they are big enough.

Sheep are usually born open range, but not the "hot house" Easter lambs which much be born in sheltered areas and protected....lambs die very easily from pnuemonia.  Lambs are usually raised on open range, and then rounded up, and shipped to a stockyard, where they are fed grain, and fattened for a few weeks prior to butchering.

Chickens are raised in the gigantic chicken barns.  The chicks are all the same age, and are only a few months old, when shipped off dirrectly to the slaughterhouse.  Slaughterhouses that butcher chickens usually only butcher chickens and turkeys, no other animals.

Livestock is quiet valuable.  The buying and selling of beef and pork shares on the New York Stock Exchange is BIG business.

By the way, now that I read your question more closely, do you have animals you want butchered yourself?  Look under butcher in your local phone book.  That is how you find the one which will do the animals from smaller family farms.  Some will come out to your farm and butcher the animals right there for you.  Some have pens and will take the animals and butcher them when they get around to it.  Others require that the animal come in dead, skinned and gutted....after you've done that work, might as well do the rest yourself!

If you are planning on reselling the meat, you MUST go to a butcher with a FDA inspector on site.  Your meat MUST be inspected and have the stamp so you can re-sell it.  

If you have other questions, post them as add ons here, and I'll check back latter, and try to help you out more.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years