Dexter Bull Beef

[Mark S]

We recently had slaughtered and butchered a non short 11 month old Dexter bull. We were unable to castrate this animal as only 1 testicle had descended. We would not normally send an animal for slaughter at this age but as he was getting active we felt it was the right choice. The carcass dead weight was 149 Kg and after the carcass had been butchered we had a total of 103 Kg of meat excluding offal to sell. Meat sold vacuum packed. The meat was lean when compared to steers we would normally slaughter at 20-24 months. We have sold 75% of the meat and feedback from customers has been excellent, a member of one lady’s family who bought a pack said the topside beef joint was the best beef she had ever eaten. We are certainly enjoying the beef we kept for ourselves. As this animal was under 12 months of age I believe it can’t be sold as beef but Rose Veal?. But due to customers positive comments it is something we will do again if the need arises. We sold the beef for a very reasonable price of £9.13 Kg and the total value was £942 (includes beef we kept for ourselves) allowing for slaughter and butchering costs of €165 this gave us a return of £777 minus rearing costs etc. The alternative to this would have been to put him through the livestock market where I would have been lucky to get £300.

Mark S

Brereton Herd

[Saffy]

That is an amazing return on what would could have been a problem animal, well done!

[Boofarm]

Very good rate for kill and cut - would be significantly more than that for me

[ann]

I would not of thought of killing one this young, so nice to know how it worked out, as getting the vet to sort them does prove quite costly and not sure after reading your post I would go that way again, if I had this problem again.

[Rob R]

It always pays to work out the options as things like slaughter and packing costs can vary so much. We have bought bulls in at half the price of steers and castrated them but found they don't yield as well as equivalent steers because they don't have the same level of finish on them even at a later stage. We've also killed bulls at 45 months but due to the nature of our grazing that was stressy enough for one lifetime and far too lean for my market so I wish I'd done what you did now...