Access to processing is a concern for any rancher whether they run thousands of head or ten.
The number of small slaughter plants has continued to decline. In one year alone, Kansas lost 79 of them, according to Mike Schultz, a cow-calf producer from Brewster, Kan. Many ranchers share his alarm at the trend.
A retired English literature professor turned ranch manager is operating one apparatus that could help turn things around — the mobile slaughter unit. The 33-foot semi-truck is essentially a slaughter plant on wheels. Among its advantages are relatively low overhead costs and the flexibility to go to remote ranches.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in this,” said Gervase Hittle, an area ranch manager who heads up the team that processes bison for the Sustainable Harvest Alliance, a nonprofit organization. He estimates that about 400 animals have been processed over the past two years using the mobile unit. The cost runs approximately $135 a head. Three or four people usually travel with the unit and the ranchers help out on-site. A USDA meat inspector accompanies the team to do the necessary inspections.
A live animal can be killed, processed and hung in the on-board cooler in 45 minutes. On a good day, Hittle and his team can process up to ten head.
“The interest is real,” Hittle said. “The only thing that stops it for people is the question of how to make it work in their operation. At Sustainable Harvest Alliance, we provide that service to people.”
Using private contributions and grant money, the Alliance purchased the mobile unit for approximately $225,000 and then did additional tweaking to make it work for buffalo, which are larger framed than most livestock.
“What we are trying to do,” he said, “is to provide a service so that a few more people can be a little more profitable with their animals.”
He’s largely referring to the neighboring Native American Lakota tribes living on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations.
While the Native tribes lack loading facilities to get the buffalo to market, they also have other reasons for preferring a “field kill.” Buffalo — even more than traditionally domesticated livestock — are stressed by handling and crowding and require heavier duty specially designed facilities.
“The Native Americans are opposed to that kind of stress on the animals,” Hittle explained. “What they want is a quiet no-stress kill. The real problem you find with buffalo is the stress of confining them in trucks, corrals or at the packing plant is very detrimental to the animal and to the quality of the meat.”
“You can taste the adrenaline,” he claimed.
“This method creates the best meat possible,” he said.
During a field kill, the animals are shot and bled, and the rest of the herd stays nearby and shows little distress, Hittle observes. Often, entire Native families become involved in the harvest process. The entire undertaking benefits from what he calls “a sense of respect for the animal.”
Observers are “amazed at how smooth and efficiently it runs,” he added.
Interest in mobile slaughter is spreading across the country. One such rig is being used by a farmers’ cooperative in the remote San Juan Islands of Washington state. A federal inspector has to catch a ferry from the mainland to accompany the mobile unit. Not long ago, sheep from the island had to take the same ferry to slaughter.
The program there began largely as a function of necessity, according to Bruce Dunlop, president of Island Grown Farmers Cooperative, in Bow, Wash.
“We’re very small farmers in the scheme of things, and for us to survive as farms, we have to sell our finished product to the customer,” he said.
Other states are following his lead. In New Mexico, the Taos County Economic Development Corp. obtained $200,000 from the state legislature to establish a mobile unit last year.
Vermont has started a mobile unit geared to harvesting turkeys and poultry at small to mid-sized farms.
While the novelty of the mobile slaughter is generating interest, Hittle cautions that it’s still limited to a niche market.
“Not everyone wants to bother with a field kill,” he said. “They can take a pot-load of cattle to the processor, unload them and not worry about it. We go out and work all day, and it is a lot of work. For us, that’s the most labor intensive part of it.”
He continues to work at improving efficiencies by doing more two-day slaughter runs. He also said buffalo are unique in that they require minimal management to start with. That leaves the herd managers with more time to kill, so to speak.
“Where we can expend the labor for this is from the labor we save in managing the herd,” he said.
