Of course the ram lamb had to get himself killed Saturday evening of
the three-day Memorial Day weekend. My custom slaughter guy wasn't
home. The meat packer was closed. It's 6PM and I'm looking at the
60-lb lamb lying bloated in the pasture, soon to be a siren call to
every coyote in the county. The other ram lambs are looking the other
way, unwilling to fess up to who delivered the fatal blow. So I'm
stuck with the job of skinning, dressing, and cutting up about 30 lb
of meat for the dogs. I didn't mind the skinning and dressing because
I'd not done it before, so there was a certain novelty to the chore.
But I've had to cut up carcasses for dog food before and it is a
long, not fun job. Nevertheless, I plugged my MP3 player with its
Clive Cussler audiobook into my ears and got that carcass skinned and
the legs and rib cage bagged in two hours. I stashed everything into
the spare fridge in the garage, too pooped to deal with cutting up the meat.
So today was meat cutting day. Because it's dog food, I got away with
cutting everything into 2-lb chunks, bone and all. Even so, that's a
lot of legbone and rib cutting to do with a small handheld meat
hacksaw. Now that everything is packaged and in the freezer, the idea
of buying a bandsaw is looking really good. I don't have many
unexpected sheep deaths, so a bandsaw won't get a lot of use. Perhaps
I could get good at cutting my own steaks and save on the $35 butcher fee.
I Googled and it seems there are sportsman models available for $250
to $330. Do any of you know of less expensive options? I'm not really
too familiar with shop tools, but I was wondering if there is a kind
of bandsaw that I could look for in a farm auction that would work.
Do any of you have experience using such a tool in lieu of an actual
meat bandsaw?
Carol
Carol Elkins
Critterhaven--Registered Barbados Blackbelly Hair Sheep
(no shear, no dock, no fuss)
Pueblo, Colorado
http://www.critterhaven.biz
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