Eight Acres

Our home butcher doesn't like to age our beef for more than 3-4 days as he has quite a complicated system to rotate his mobile cool-rooms to each customer.  If he let us hang our meat for longer he would need more cool-rooms and would have to put his prices up, so we don't mind fitting in with his schedule.  This does mean that our beef is not as tender as if it was hung for longer.  Some people will hang a beef carcass for up to two weeks! wet aged rib fillet  We have found a couple of different strategies to still get tender meat.  Both involve what is known as "wet aging" the meat.  Wet aging means aging the meat in vacuum packs after it is butchered, as opposed to dry aging which is hanging the meat in a cool-room before its butchered ( read more about it here ).  This is a technique that has only been possible since plastic bags and vacuum sealers have been available.  The first few times we had beasts killed we wet aged all the good s...

Its mid-autumn and our nine angus-cross heifers are currently calving.  This may seem an odd time of the year to have calves, and certainly in the temperate areas you would expect to see baby calves and lambs in spring, but in the sub-tropics we can do things a bit differently as we don't have a cold winter. Read the rest over at my house cow ebook blog. Buy my ebook "Our Experience with House Cows" on  Etsy ,  Lulu  and  Amazon , or email on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com to arrange delivery.  More information on my  house cow ebook blog . Reviews of "Our Experience with House Cows" Kim from the Little Black Cow Blog Fiona from Live at Arbordale Farm Marie from Go Milk the Cow Renata from Sunnyside Farm Fun Gavin from Little Green Cheese  (and The Greening of Gavin)

I usually split homekill beef into two distinct days.  Slaughter day is stressful and emotional.  There is the worry of getting the animal into the appropriate yard, the butcher turning up on time, seeing the animal killed and quartered, its a hard day.  Then a few days later (depending how long the carcass is hung for, this could be up to a week or more) you get butcher day.  Butcher day is hard work, but its not stressful if you are well prepared and you have a good butcher.  Here's a few tips and tricks for getting all that meat safely into the freezer. Turn on your freezers and fridges the night before Just make sure everything is working in case you are going to need to urgently borrow or purchase additional facilities! Get a good vacuum packer It really pays not to be stingy when buying a vacuum packer.  Sure you will only use it a few days a year, but when you do use it, you need it to work ALL day until that meat is packed.  We us...

Every year for the last seven years we have raised and killed a steer for beef.  I know this because I can count off the names of each of them, Trevor, Murray, Bruce, Bratwurst, Frankfurter, Romeo... and this year it was Monty's turn, but he was a bit small (being a jersey cross dexter), so we also killed a young heifer recently acquired (we named her Fatty, because she had been in the good paddock, she's a mini hereford cross lowline maybe).  Our butcher doesn't like to come out for animals under 200 kg, so we wanted to be sure it was worth his travel. Little Fatty heifer Monty the jersey/dexter steer - a bit small maybe Having two animals killed on the same day was a challenge and took some planning.  First we had to dig an extra large hole for the inedible bits (head, hooves and guts).  And then we had to figure out how to keep the second animal calm while the butcher was working on the first one.  He likes to shoot one, process it, and then do th...

Sometimes I tell people that we have steers, and they think I said "stairs" and then I have to explain what steers are, and that not all cattle are "cows".  Even worse is the terms used in cattle sale reports, yearling store quality steers sold well, while cows with calves at foot were generally in poor condition.  And it goes on.  If you are still confused, pop over to my house cow ebook blog for some help with cattle terminology.... You might also be interested in my series on getting started with homestead dairy Interview with myself Interview with Mark and Kate from Purple Pear Permaculture Interview with Kim from the Little Black Cow Interview with Rose Petal Interview with Marie from Go Milk the Cow Interview with Ohio Farmgirl Buy my ebook "Our Experience with House Cows" on  Etsy ,  Lulu  and  Amazon , or email on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com to arrange delivery.  More information on my  house cow ebook blog...

Every year around winter-time we have one of our home-raised steers butchered at our property by a mobile a butcher.  We fill the freezer with meat, bones and tallow, and we sometimes even keep the hide for tanning.  It is very important to us that, as far as possible, we use the whole beast.  If this is something that you would to do too, here are a list of posts that you may find useful. Butcher day is Cheryl's favourite Butchering tips and tricks Home butcher vs meatworks The pros and cons of using a home butcher compared to sending a steer to an abattoir.  We did send our first steer to be processed, but all the rest have been done at home.  The main problem for us was finding a good butcher, but loading the animal on the truck and preparing all the paperwork was a real pain.  Its much easier for us to have them butchered at home (and I think its better for the animal too) if you can find someone who will do it. Homekill meat - some tip...

Romeo was our fifth steer to be butchered on our property by a mobile butcher.  I've written posts before about tips for homekill butchering  and last year I calculated the value of the meat and determined that it was worth raising steers for meat.  It may sound strange, but this was the first year that we really thought about meat quality rather than meat quantity!    Here's what we found out: Cheryl checks the meat quality Prior to slaughter Ensure the animal has good nutrition and access to clean water in the lead up to slaughter.  Green grass is ideal (but not always easy to organise).  ( More information here ) Handle the animal gently with minimum of stress.  If you need to move it to another paddock for the butcher, move it a few days early, with at least one companion, so that the animal is not stressed.   Try to find an experienced butcher.  In some areas there's not much choice, but if you can, find out which butche...

If you follow the popular media you might be feeling guilty about eating meat, even dairy products, for a number of reasons.  There's a few things you should know about eating meat... (By the way, I haven't written this post to attack vegetarians, I just thought you all might find this information useful, what you eat is your choice, but I hope that it is an informed choice). Meat and climate change Meat and your heart health Michael Pollan follows a steer from farm to feedlot Meat and animal welfare The animals that we eat are domesticated, that means that they can no longer survive in the wild, just like your pet dog or cat, they rely on humans to help them find food, water and shelter.  Farmers spend their days tending to these animals.  If they weren't expecting to sell them, they wouldn't want to spend that time caring for them, and those animals would not exist.  However, that is not to say that we don't owe these animals a quality of life. ...

Let me just say at the start that I do not see the need for branding our cattle. Now that digital ear tags are compulsory as part of the NLIS (National Livestock Identification System), branding seems completely obsolete. However, in QLD, if we want to sell any cattle over 100kg (and we surely will want to sell them all eventually), they must be branded, and so we brand them.  I have contacted the RSPCA over this issue and they say that they support dry-ice branding  as a better option, however these systems are expensive and difficult to set up, requiring access to dry ice, which is not practical for farmers in remote locations.  And they are still painful for the cattle.  I hope that they are really working behind the scenes to outlaw this barbaric practice altogether, as it seems to be optional in some other states already. It is really just a waste of farmers’ time, as we have to tag the animals anyway (which is quicker than setting up a branding furnace!), ...

The cattle have certainly kept us busy in 2013!  At Eight Acres (and part of our neighbour's place) we currently have the two Jersey house cows (Bella and Molly), their calves (Nancy, and Monty, who is now weaned), Bella's previous calf, Romeo (who is next up for the freezer), Benny the Braford that had paralysis tick as a young calf (destined for our neighbour's freezer) and Donald our tiny Dexter bull.  This year we had Frank(furter) butchered as well.  At Cheslyn Rise, after the brief experient with steers last year, we now have about 25 Braford cows and their calves.  Unfortunately Maus our lovely Braford had to go due to an eye cancer.   I haven't written about them as much as I thought I had, so I've included some posts from previous years as well.  I am also currently writing an ebook about our experience with house cows, but its is taking me longer than expected to get it all down (we keep having more experiences!).  Next year I will be w...

We got another steer killed a few weeks ago now, and I weighed all the cuts of meat so that I could work out the approximate value of the meat and compare the cost of raising a steer to the cost of buying all the meat from the butcher.   My article has been published on the Farm Style website , which is a FREE online community for small and hobby farmers to learn everything about farming and country living . If you want to know more, head over the Farm Style to  read the the article  and then come back here for comments and questions.  Do you raise steers?  Is it worth it?  Do you have any questions? More about our home butchering here .      

We are only new to the cattle industry, and I may get some of the terminology wrong in this post, but I was hoping to explain a few things that I've learnt about the cattle industry in Australia.  Broadly speaking, there are three different types of cattle operations.  The first is “cow and calf”, where you own a number of cows and a bull, aim to produce one calf from each cow per year, and either fatten the calves or sell at weaning age.  This leads to the second type, which is to buy those weaners and fatten them to feed-lot size.  Finally, some very dedicated and skilled individuals will chose to run a stud, producing consistent pure-bred cattle, particularly bulls, which may be purchased by cow and calf operations as breeding stock.  Each type of operation has its pros and cons and the one that’s best for you will depend on your land, your available time, and knowledge of cattle, and of course you can have a bit of a mixture if you want to.  our pen o...