Best animals for hobby farm skin#

She really checked out the entire scene and the barnyard. The blood leaves a smell for a good couple of days, I’m sure longer for her. When the butcher drove off, I watered down the area where the blood was, and then let Marcella out. It is my job to help the butcher catch each sheep when that is over, my job is done. I sat with her once all the sheep were dead. She was not afraid, but she paced back and forth quite a bit. She was behind a gate with her goat and pig clan and could hear the butcher’s voice as he worked and talked with Martyn, my husband. This was the first year that we had Marcella, our guard dog, during a harvest day. It is very beautiful: bright red, and it coagulates quickly.

Best animals for hobby farm skin#

I inspect the skin and certain organs out of curiosity.

The first years, I didn’t look much at the dead animal. Everyone comes to that individual nature through years of experience. Everyone deals with their own individual nature as they see fit. But he hunts deer and eats lamb and beef. Interestingly enough, my butcher doesn’t eat much pork because he says he kills so many pigs. They love animals and want to do their best. It helps to have a butcher you can talk to. On the actual day, it is so fast, and then they are gone. I know I will always feel anxious in the days leading up to the slaughter. I was talking to another farm friend who said it would be the day she wasn’t agitated that would upset her. Sheep and a guard llama at Katherine Dunn’s farm. I’ve heard this from every farmer I know. It is a process one goes through as a farmer, the butchering. If done properly, the cut through the vertebrae is instant, and it is over. Sheep have small heads, the bullet can easily go astray, causing more panic and injury to both sheep and butcher (a sick animal is another story).

Would it be better to shoot them in the head first? No. But I question this every year, and every year I ask my vets about it again. They feel nothing and are instantly dead. The sheep have their throats cut, right through the vertebrae. Different animals are butchered differently. I asked veterinarians, hunters, butchers and farm friends how the animals should be killed. I hang white prayer flags in the stall, and the night before, I sit for a very short time and thank them for their good work and sacrifice. I think nature has given me a pretty good path to follow, just like it gave all the other creatures a path to follow to survive. I choose to be within the food chain, not to stand outside of it. But I come back to the same decision each time: I am part of nature, not above it. You question your motives, as you should or at least I do, year in and year out. It will always be uncomfortable, just like taking a dying animal to be euthanized: You know, and they don’t. That was a very uncomfortable day, and it still is. Of course, this has changed in the 11 years since we had our first group of sheep butchered. I want to describe what it is like to be present at butcher day, and what goes into the routine leading up to it. And we do eat meat from time to time from our nearby store or local butcher, or from other farm friends.īut I don’t want to debate where you get your food, or what you choose to eat.

I am not judging anyone who eats store-bought meat: Not everyone can live on a farm, or chooses to, and not everyone wants to raise animals. When we knew we were moving to the farm, I decided that if I was going to continue to eat meat regularly, I owed it to myself – and the animal – to be present at its death, as well as its birth and the days in between. Some people get uncomfortable reading about anything to do with killing an animal, and I understand this. Angry readers who don’t eat meat want me to use the word “butcher.” So this is for them: We butchered the lambs. This year we harvested three ewe lambs on butcher day.