No pictures but this morning we harvested one of our old "short and solid" cows. Looks like she may have been 1,100 pounds. Huge and loaded with fat and massive hind quarters. It was the largest cow I've ever slaughtered and I'm feeling the pain of a hard day's work. Doing your own beef is hard work but very rewarding!

Here she is last week:

She certainly is a smooth and solid looking girl! What is her breeding?

I don't know her breeding. I picked her up earlier this year from the sale barn. People sell off their old cows for slaughter and I occasionally like to pick up a bargain when I see one. I actually got two of them this year so the other one will be harvested in the early spring, I think.

Dave how long do you hang the meat? And it being an old cow, is the meat going to be tough? Not that I plan on buying an old cow to slaughter, just curious.

Depending on the breed, we normally hang them for 21 days. Remember fresh red beef is dangerous as it has enzymes in it, that can and will hurt humans. Some like the Suffolk's need longer hanging.
Regards.
Neil.

Thanks Neil, I didn't know that about the enzymes in fresh red meat.

We usually age for 2 weeks. Sometimes a bit less.

How does the meat taste, it being an old cow, how is the flavor, is it tough compared to a young steer????

I actually prefer the meat of older cows. They always seem to come out with much higher quality beef, and lots of really high quality fat that we use. At the sale barn the old "short and solids" (this is what they call the ten year old or older cows) always go for the cheapest per pound. I think they are undervalued.

Members of my family ran a grocery store and a butcher shop. The ground beef was made from the trimmings from the steaks and roasts with added lean meat from what we called boneless cow or bull........older beef that wouldn't make good steaks or roasts.. The boneless meat was often used a couple of days after it was chilled and boned....within 3 days of when it was killed. I ate that meat for many years. I have never heard of "dangerous enzymes" in properly refrigerated and correctly cooked fresh meat.

Dave, from what you are saying I think that it is too bad that the average consumer is not offered the choice of the old cow at reasonable prices as opposed to the prime steer. Right now the price of beef is out of sight so we have not been buying too much beef.

Paul, thank you for your input, like I said before, I had never heard of the "bad enzyme" in beef before and I have been eating beef for many many many years.

Yeah we ate some beef tonight. It was alive yesterday morning and we're eating it 36 hours later. I think the aging is only a matter of making it more tender.

Dave, did you do all the work yourself? Butchering, skinning, cutting, etc?

Doesn't the aging also give it more flavor besides tenderizing the meat?

I am not sure if this will work in the US. So here goes it. http://gizmodo.com/5866754/the...
Regards.
Neil.

I did it all myself if you include my 4 oldest children. The 5 of us worked together. It took about 4 hours to kill, skin and quarter.

Do you use the hide?

Did you take a class to learn how to do that?

I am wondering just how ones learns to do that. I know many hunters learn to skin but I don';t think then you automatically know how to cut the animal up for eating.

(Caution - some of the photos below show animals in processing.)

We usually don't mess with the hide but this time I'm going to give it a try. So I was careful and skinned off the hide in one nice piece and I wrapped it and froze it in the freezer. I'll do some research and figure out what I'm doing and thaw it and work it at that point. Maybe sometime in the winter when I have nothing else to do.

How did I learn it? Well, when we moved to Kerrville the deer there were as plentiful as mice and we decided to start harvesting some for venison. I found an outline tutorial on how to skin, clean and butcher the carcass. Took my 30/30 outside and shot a deer and with kitchen knives in hand Trish and I got to work. I was astounded at how intuitive and simple it was and really appreciated the feeling of self-sufficiency and was hooked from then on.

8 years or so ago I bought a full grown hog from a neighbor and he offered to butcher it with me. So he shot the hog and he and I worked together to get it processed. It was nearly identical a process as a deer so my confidence grew.

We did many hogs over the years like that.

So when we started raising cows, it was natural that we'd process them ourselves and sure enough, they are just as easy as a hog or deer, just larger. All the cuts of meat are essentially the same in all animals. The pork loin (top of the animal on both sides of the backbone) are the exact same as the steaks on a cow, which is also the same as the backstrap on a deer. We usually use the tractor's loaded to lift the animal off the ground and that works just fine.

One of my first deer:




This is how plentiful they were in Kerrville:



My hog harvest in 2010:



I actually video taped the entire butchering process of the hog in case anyone ever wanted it for learning purposes. I may upload it to youtube one day for other peoples' benefit.