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Saturday, November 8, 2014

Goat Butchering, By a Novice

OP
We butchered one of our wethers, or castrated bucks, today. Butchering chickens has been part of our yearly routine for many, many years. This is only the second time we have butchered a goat, and the last time was about two years ago. There are many people that have butchered many an animal that will  

Frank
be able to help point out things that would make this task easier, more effective, and safer. A good friend of ours, OP, who has hunted and dressed out deer for years, came over today to help us out and give us some pointers. 



If you do not want to see pictures of this butchering process. Please do not view the remainder of this article. We will show our set up, process and end result. It's a little long, so sit back and enjoy the latest adventure in the life of Frank and Fern. We always begin a butchering process by thanking the Lord and the animal for providing us with sustenance and nourishment.



First, get things set up and ready. The table that held the drying sunflowers earlier in the summer was hosed down, brought in, and given a good washing. 

The butcher paper, plastic film and masking tape were brought in the kitchen along with a bus tub. The last time we butchered goats I tried using waxed paper for the first layer of wrapping followed by the butcher paper. It didn't work well. It did not make a good seal against the meat and allowed for some freezer burn. So, this time I am going back to the plastic film as the first layer. The grinder was set up, then all was ready in the house.





The knives were checked for sharpness. We have several knives we have accumulated along the way that I wanted to try out, just to see how they worked on a project like this. 



I have used this trusty skinning knife for many years. It is a good fit for me and works well. 



Once we had everything in place in the kitchen, we set up the area where we would hang the goat to dress it out. We used the tailgate of the truck as a workbench for our knives, towels, bucket of water, and bus tub to hold the meat. We used a reciprocating saw to cut through the bones of the neck, back, legs and pelvis area.





We use a gambrel and pulley for hanging the carcass. 







Now it's off to the barn. The last time we butchered, we put the goats in the stock trailer overnight with only water to help empty their stomachs. Then we drove the trailer down to the garage and hung them in the same place we are using today. But to do this we had to catch the animals, put them in the trailer, catch them again, and bring them out to be shot. Well, we don't plan on wrestling the goats through this routine again. We now have to be more careful with Frank's back, so this is not something we will be doing again. 


This time we shot the goat in the pasture, loaded him into the bucket of the tractor, then used the tractor to lift him up to the pulley to be dressed out. This worked kind of well. Unfortunately, we didn't drop him with the first shot, but it ended up okay in the long run.




Now for the butchering. As I noted in the title of this article, this is butchering by a novice. One of the things I used to learn how to butcher is this book. And one of the techniques I looked up again is how to tie off the bung (anus) to prevent any leakage from the intestines. When I asked OP what he thought of our techniques, one of the things he hadn't seen before was this process. He didn't think it would be necessary when dressing out deer, but commented on how full this goat's stomach was and that using this technique was a good idea. 

 

Here is a pictorial of the process.









After I got the meat in the house, I washed it thoroughly to remove any hair and blood.


Here is all of the meat including all of the scraps and organs that we saved for dogfood. There really isn't much meat on a goat, and especially a dairy goat. Since we raise Nubians and not meat goats, the comparison is like butchering a Jersey compared to an Angus, there is a big difference in the amount of meat you get.

 The only whole pieces of meat we kept were the hind legs, backstrap and tenderloin. The neck and front legs were boned out to grind.

After we had enough ground up, we stopped and had burgers for lunch. OP had not had goat meat anywhere except in a restaurant, and his first comment was, "This tastes just like meat." It's a very true statement. Many people turn their noses up at the thought of eating goat meat. But if you cook it just like you would any other meat - beef, pork - then it does taste just like any other meat. I realized just how much I had missed having some goat in the freezer after the first bite. It is very good. The only thing I did was add salt and pepper to the meat before cooking, just like I do with any other ground meat. One thing about our ground meat, it doesn't hold together like other ground meats when you make burgers. I have to be a little more careful with it or it will break and crumble. It is also fairly lean, so I put some oil in the pan as well.

We ended up with a good amount of dogfood from this butchering session. We keep the fatty scraps, the thin layer of meat on the ribs, heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs all as dogfood. If times ever do get hard, we want to have things set aside for Pearl, our dog, as well as for ourselves.


Besides the hind leg and one pound of ground meat we sent home with OP for helping us today, and the burgers we ate, we ended up with one hind leg, backstrap, tenderloin and nine pounds of ground meat. Not much, huh? While we were processing the meat our friend Grace and her husband stopped by for a visit. Grace helped me cut up the last of the meat for grinding and while we were visiting she made an interesting comment something like this. "This is a lot of work for only a little meat. But, if times get hard, you'll have meat and know how to process it." She's right. It is a lot of work, and we wish it was more meat, but we are very happy to have meat on the hoof out in the pasture and the tools we need to process it. This is also the reason we raise goats. If the time arrives when we no longer have access to refrigeration and freezers, then a goat has a smaller carcass, therefore, less meat. It is easier to process and preserve without the worry of spoilage.

After trying out the knives, these three worked out very well. The others were okay, but not near as effective or comfortable to use. This is another good thing for me to know. I think it's important to have tools that fit your hand and do the job, and the only way to find that out is through experience. One of the important safety factors that I like about these knives is the finger guard. With these knives I don't have to worry about my hand slipping down the blade while working with wet hands.

It's been a long, busy day. It's also been a very good day. We had good visits from friends and family. We learned a few new things about butchering, and we now have more meat ready to eat. Life is good.

Until next time - Fern

12 comments:

  1. This is an outstanding post! I think your open approach shows the reality of raising your own meat. Good and Bad. It is a lot of work but then it is chemical, hormone and drug free. You know exactly what went into it.

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    1. Thank you, Fiona. It's hard work, takes lots of time, is a big mess to clean up, and we wouldn't have it any other way. We appreciate the opportunity we have to be able to eat the meat that we raised. Thank you for sharing.

      Fern

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  2. Great friends. Perfect weather. Meat in the freezer. And CAKE!

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    1. Glad you had a good day, and thank you for the help, OP. No injuries, it was a good safe day. Let them eat cake.

      Frank

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  3. Thanks for the great post! Really enjoyed the reading and pictures, we use to do hogs in my youth and learning about goat slaughter is a great skill!

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    1. We've butchered a couple of hogs before, and a goat is a whole lot easier. It's always nice to learn something new, in this case, we experimented with a variety of knives. Some worked fine, some didn't. Like I said, it's always nice to learn. Thank you for the comment.

      Frank

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  4. Thank you for this post. It was very educational! I have a couple of questions that may be obvious to others, but not having butchered an animal before, I am just learning. First, do you hang the goat for a while first and let it bleed out, or does butchering take care of that? Also, I have heard that you are supposed to let meat hang for a day or two in a cold room to "age" the meat and release the stress hormones so it isn't tough. That sounded kind of strange to me, and seeing that you ate yours right away, this must not be true. Nonetheless, I love reading posts like this because I want to learn as much as I can.

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    1. Hi Vickie, these are very good questions. I'll try to address them. But first let me state that we are not experts, this is just the way that we do it.

      Yes, you do need to bleed out the animal. Right after the animal was shot, we put him in the tractor bucket and brought him down to the butchering site. There we hung him by his back legs, cut his throat from side to side, and also up around each of his rear ankles. At this time, we also removed his head.

      Sometimes we let the animal age for a day or two, but since we were totally out of red meat, we decided to go ahead and finish the process. I don't know anything about "release the stress hormones", but many people do age the meat for a few days if the temperature is right. We plan on butchering two more goats in the next few days, and we will hang them for a couple of days.

      The book shown in the post is an excellent read, great pictures, easy to understand. We don't butcher for sport. This animal that we butchered was born here, everything that it had eaten it's entire life came from here, with some occasional grain. This is why we do it. It's very similar to processing a deer. Hope this helps. Again, good questions.

      Frank

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  5. Hi, noticed you threw away the innards? Goat and cattle stomach is tasty, when well cleaned and cooked with white beans. Also, heart, liver and kidneys are edible and nice when well spiced. Guts make nice "strings" when cleaned of their contents. And if you had dogs, they would love some rice or maize cooked with these chunks of "meat" inside.

    A silly curiosity: which gun/caliber did you use to shoot this goat and where did you aim? I usually shoot .22 rifle between eyes when butchering confined large stock as pigs, cattle, but would want something bigger/powerful to drop any critter on the spot, on the pasture and such.

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    1. We did throw away the intestines and stomach, and at the time discussed that the day may come when we keep everything except the contents of the stomach. We kept the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, extra fat and 'gooey' parts for dogfood. That is part of what is pictured above.

      I generally shoot behind the skull from the back of the head to dispatch the goat. This normally drops them immediately. For pigs, I try to do just above right between the eyes. I use a .40 caliber hand gun. The butcher that we have used, uses a .22LR, but he has a lot more practice than I do. Hope this helps.

      Frank

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  6. My husband and I just had our 2 nigerian dwarfs butchered. They were both wethers. I was shocked at how delicious and tender the meat was. Next year we wont even try to sell our males unless someone really wants one.

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    1. We do the same thing. We keep all of the boys and ban (castrate) them. We call them our meat on the hoof. No need to worry about preserving or storing the meat, it just walks around in the pasture until we are ready to eat. Thank you for sharing.

      Fern

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