Does anyone else butcher their own meat?

Poka_Doodle

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We butcher all meat we kill. This includes turning our shop ing to a butcher room after each sugcessful Elk or Deer hunt. We also do our chickens, and it takes all night. I manage to escape every time from killing and chicken butcher. But I oddly love helping the guys butcher Elk or what ever they get. Cutting meat takes a decent bit of time and I have been know to also cut myself when not wearing latex gloves, but it is still so much fun. I only escape chicken butchering because I have a close connection with the species.
If anyone else does or is interested in it please post about it. This thread is also on BYH.
 

tortoise

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Yes, we butcher ours too. Not my favorite thing to do. :( Venison is the worst for me because we hang it and it's cold. My hands get so cold working on it. Absolutely miserable.

Last year we processed 3 deer. DH hasn't seen anything this year, so we might be processing a lamb instead.
 

sumi

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I haven't been able to butcher or eat my chickens, so we sold or gave away extras, but over the years we have raised and butchered more pigs than I can count. We used to sell the meat, so we butchered regularly. It's an unpleasant procedure, but the meat and knowing where it came from and what went into it, is great! Not to mention it is so much cheaper compared to buying meat at the shops!

We also butchered sheep, but on a very small scale.

We did not have the facilities to process and cut the meat ourselves, so the carcasses went to the local butchery to be hung and cut for us, at a minimal fee.
 

Poka_Doodle

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I personally feel like it would be harder to butcher your owwn animals anyways. I might get to help the 3 guys that went our over the weekend butcher their 2 elk today. Usually we would have more help and more elk to butcher after this family anual trip but people ha thigs and not everyone got a tag this year unlike the past
 

Denim Deb

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When I have time, I do my own chickens. It's not my favorite thing to do, but there's no place around here where I could take them.
 

Mini Horses

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I don't anymore. Gave 3 beautiful roosters away today to a guy with 100 hens! Free range, sells eggs. So these 6 mo old guys will have a great life and I just didn't want to butcher them. Besides, it's really messy to do and if I need to do this, want more than 3. Have done it in past, been a long time.

Larger animals, I take to a butcher.
 

baymule

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I have butchered deer. I used to hunt and can field dress, then cut and wrap. I made my own stuffed smoked sausage. I used to raise rabbits and killed and dressed them. You know the scene in Forest Gump where Bubba is telling Forest all the ways to cook shrimp? Well, I was like that in cooking rabbit. Rabbit enchiladas, rabbit chili, bunny burgers, rabbit casserole, rabbit tacos, rabbit sausage, fried rabbit, rabbit and dumplings..... :lol:

Now I butcher old hens and roosters from a straight run. I raised 20 ducks a couple of years ago and butchered them. We are raising pigs right now, I will have ours butchered, cut and wrapped.
 

goatgurl

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back in the day we butchered all our own meat, beef, hogs, lambs, goats, deer and chickens but that was a couple of years ago. now i send everything do the butcher shop except the rabbits, chickens and ducks. makes life so much easier.
 

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