I smell like a cow. In fact a lot of us smell like a cow. It’s not because we didn’t take a shower this morning either.
Our family is home schooled and this leaves room for some fun out of the ordinary field trips. We took a trip up to the farm, and armed with sharp knives, diagrams, hacksaws, gloves, and one apron we proceeded to butcher a 1000 lb cow. (We also had the help of other items we won't mention here.)
It needed butchering so don’t feel too bad for it. It’s out of it’s misery now.
Anyway….there were a lot of blood and guts involved. It was rather interesting though to see all the stomachs. Cows have 4 I believe. Some of them were FULL with grass. There was one shaped like a basket ball…Bonnie's got her hand on it there. (Warning: proceed with caution if you don't like blood.)
It look liked this inside.
We ended up with a lot of meat - mostly for stewing and ground beef.
What’s for dinner, Bonnie?
If you’re all dying to see more photos, mostly blood and guts type stuff, you can click on the links below. Some of them are just too gross to post in the open. Sorry guys. I’m sure someone will be glad I did this. All you ‘aww, but what’s wrong with blood and guts!?’ people in the background can just be quiet and click. ; )
Heart
Gutting
Red Meat
Skinning
Chest Cavity
Wow. I think I’m going to get changed now. ;-)
Our family is home schooled and this leaves room for some fun out of the ordinary field trips. We took a trip up to the farm, and armed with sharp knives, diagrams, hacksaws, gloves, and one apron we proceeded to butcher a 1000 lb cow. (We also had the help of other items we won't mention here.)
It needed butchering so don’t feel too bad for it. It’s out of it’s misery now.
Anyway….there were a lot of blood and guts involved. It was rather interesting though to see all the stomachs. Cows have 4 I believe. Some of them were FULL with grass. There was one shaped like a basket ball…Bonnie's got her hand on it there. (Warning: proceed with caution if you don't like blood.)
It look liked this inside.
We ended up with a lot of meat - mostly for stewing and ground beef.
What’s for dinner, Bonnie?
If you’re all dying to see more photos, mostly blood and guts type stuff, you can click on the links below. Some of them are just too gross to post in the open. Sorry guys. I’m sure someone will be glad I did this. All you ‘aww, but what’s wrong with blood and guts!?’ people in the background can just be quiet and click. ; )
Heart
Gutting
Red Meat
Skinning
Chest Cavity
Wow. I think I’m going to get changed now. ;-)
Labels: cows, homeschool field trip
6 Comments:
Well, you are all primed and ready now to come next fall/winter and help us butcher pigs!
We think that qualifies as being worse than chicken butchering in the grossness department. Glad you learned a new life skill. :)
Carol, I hope you washed up at least before typing that post! :)
We used to butcher all our beef, but since we sell it now we have to send it to a professional butchers. Oh, well. Oh, and we used to have pigs that we would raise to butcher and their names were Ham, Porkchops, Bacon, and the list goes on. :)
~Abby
We usually shot the cow, then cleaned it out and let it hang in the barn for a few days in the cold (in the winter) to let the meat tenderize a bit. The Lord provided us with some nice equipment for butchering so we were able to do the cow up in a day or two. I don't exactly remember how long it took us as it has been quite some time since we did it.
Abby
Great post, Carol!
Wow! What a project. When we homeschooled I was proud of the fact that we dissected a cow's eye. I can't imagine dissecting a whole cow. Good job!
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