Slaughtering a horse is a time-consuming task that requires knowledge, experience, as well as physical and moral strength. The process is divided into several stages, the taste of meat and the quality of the skin depend on the correct execution of which.
When are horses sent for slaughter?
Most often, horses are slaughtered as necessary, after culling or as unnecessary - the meat should not be lost. If horses are raised specifically for meat, then they are sent for slaughter no later than two years of age.
The process of slaughtering and butchering horses is almost the same as slaughtering cattle. The main difference is the moral aspect. If bulls were originally associated with meat, then a horse with loyalty, hard work, beauty, speed. It is better for professionals to engage in slaughtering a horse, but if it is not possible to call a slaughterer, the farmer has to slaughter and cut the animal on his own.
The best time for slaughter is mid-autumn. In regions where the temperature does not exceed + 10 ° C, you can slaughter horses and other cattle all year round.
Slaughter preparation
It is recommended not to feed horses before slaughter for two days - the gastrointestinal tract should be cleaned. Watering the animal is stopped three hours before death.
At special plants, slaughter is put on stream - there are all the necessary devices to simplify the process. Frequent farming is another matter, here you have to slaughter and cut animals in a primitive way - on earth. At the same time, the value of meat and its taste are reduced.
What else needs to be done before slaughter:
- Prepare a special platform on which you will carve the horse. It can be a barn or an open air place.
- Place the necessary equipment on the platform - a large table, poles for tying the animal, as well as a container for blood flow. It’s good if there is a special goat or pole with a hook on which the animal is suspended - then all actions are performed in the upright position of the carcass.
- Before slaughter, get acquainted with the anatomy of the horse, the basics of cutting and with hygiene standards.
- During the preparatory period, give the animal plenty of water. This dilutes the blood, and the carcass loses it more easily. A plentiful watering hole also facilitates the skinning process.
The better the bloodless animal, the better the meat will be stored.
If you neglect the slaughter exposure, then there is a high probability of problems when skinning and when cutting.
Slaughter process
Slaughtering a horse consists of two successive operations - stunning and bleeding.
If the animal is stunned correctly, its heart continues to beat.
Stunning is carried out in one of the ways:
- Mechanical slaughter - with a hammer, stylet or firing apparatus.
- By electric current.
- Chemical way.
Exsanguination is an important operation on which the quality of meat depends - commodity and sanitary, as well as the shelf life. To bleed an animal, it is necessary to cut large vessels - carotid arteries and jugular veins.
For bleeding use a special hollow knife V.Yu. Wolferz - at its end there is a rubber hose through which blood flows into the vessel. With good blood flow, its weight is 4.5-5% of the weight of the carcass.
At home
Unlike a meat-packing plant, a private farm does not have the necessary equipment that brings the process of slaughter, butchering and gutting to perfection. Here everything is simplified as much as possible, and only sharp knives, ropes and a dull heavy object are used from the tool and inventory - for stunning.
Slaughter is rarely done without an assistant. This is a difficult job, requiring physical strength and time.
Stages of slaughtering a horse in a household:
- Drive to the slaughter site. Tie the animal, and with the help of ropes lay on the ground. Assistants usually help the slayer to cope with this task, so select assistants in advance.
- Stun. Stun the animal by striking it hard on the head. It is important that the horse immediately faints, so beat should be as strong as possible.
- Bleeding. A stunned animal needs to be quickly - it suddenly comes to its senses, cut the throat. Follow a clear algorithm:
- Make a cut in the throat - this is the most effective way to bleed. To do everything right, study the location of the veins and arteries in advance. Make a cross section, as accurately as possible. Well, if you cut the throat the first time, or at least the second attempt. Choose a knife large and wide.
- When you open the vessels, leave the carcass down the incision for 10-15 minutes - to drain the blood. Do not throw it away - it is a useful product for feeding pigs and poultry.
- Drag the bloodless carcass to the cutting site.
- Flaying. When the blood is deflated, proceed to freshness. Skinning process:
- Cut off your ears completely. Cut the skin of the nostrils and mouth by making annular cuts.
- Guide the incision from the nose through the eye on the appropriate side. Then through the forehead to the ear. Now you can remove the skin from part of the skull.
- Make an incision from the killer wound - from the neck to the lower lip. Now remove all skin from the head.
- After making an incision between the upper vertebrae and the occipital bone, separate the head from the carcass.
- To simplify the removal of the skin from the carcass, turn it belly up.
- Starting from the slaughter cut, lead the knife to the anus.
- Make ring-shaped cuts on the limbs - above the knees.
- Having disconnected the skin in the chest and from the lower part of the neck, cut the skin along the hock joints - on the inside of the limbs. Act carefully - a carcass with damaged tendons is difficult to suspend.
- Remove all easily removable skin, and remove the rest with your hands, making cuts from the inside. To remove the skin from the sacrum and back, pull it at the same time with both hands on both sides.
- After making an annular incision around the tail, remove the remaining skin.
- Gutting. When the skin is removed from the front and sides, cut the chest with an ax. Separate the esophagus and trachea. If necessary, bandage so that the contents of the stomach do not leak. Now remove the internal organs, being careful not to damage the carcass. Gutting Procedure:
- After cutting the peritoneum, get the stomach and intestines.
- Get out your heart and lungs.
- Next, remove the liver with the gall bladder.
- Folding skins. Fold the skin along the line of the spine - with the wool outward. Let it lie down and cool down - it takes 2-3 hours. While the skin cools down, do some carcass cutting. In the future, the skin can be preserved - salted. Salted skins are stored at a temperature of about +8 degrees.
- Mascara processing.
- Cut the carcass in two, along an imaginary straight line passing between 13 and 14 vertebrae. Cross sections in the conditions of house slaughter are most convenient to do. You can cut the carcass into half or quarters.
- Separate each half or quarter from the bones. Strip meat from fat, fibers, and tendons.
- Separate the neck from the bone. Strip, chop and chop into pieces. Perform a similar operation for the perineal neck border. Remove the scapula.
- Strip the ribs. Boning the bones of the pelvis and lower spine, removing all the bones.
- Upper legs, dividing into pieces, clean from bones and tendons. Do the same with the brisket and legs.
- It remains to roll the lower part of the legs and cut the meat on the humerus.
The process ends with salting the cooled skin and washing the carcass, it is kept in a cool room in limbo - this is why the integrity of the tendons is so important.
At the slaughterhouse
Each meat processing plant uses its own method of slaughter and carcass cutting. A big plus of meat processing plants is the sterility of the process. Slaughter Order:
- Immobilizing and stunning an animal. Most often, an electric discharge is used for this.
- In mechanized slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, bleeding is carried out by hanging the carcass vertically. A stunned animal is cut longitudinally through the skin and tissues along the midline of the neck. Bandaging the esophagus, dissect large vessels - where they exit the chest cavity. Blood flows out in about 6-8 minutes - while the carcass moves on the conveyor, bleeding just comes to an end. At the plants, carcasses move at a speed of 3-5 pieces per minute.
- Bloodless carcass, fresh, opened and cut according to GOST. The pieces of meat obtained after cutting are also suspended vertically.
How to carve horsemeat?
At home, the horse is slaughtered in the traditional way for peasant farmsteads. Cutting is carried out primitively, in violation of sanitary standards. To properly carve a horse, use the appropriate standards, in particular GOST 32226-2013 “Meat. Cutting horse meat and foal into cuts. "
Different parts of the carcass are characterized by fat content, bony, the number of muscle fibers. Accordingly, their food use is different. With proper cutting, the different parts come out roughly equivalent in taste as well as in appearance.
There are "folk" ways of cutting carcasses, for example, Kazakh:
- The animal is cut right at the place of slaughter.
- All bones are immediately disconnected at the joints. The ax is not used - they do everything with a sharp knife.
- Cut off the head, then cut off the fat on the neck, then cut the neck into pieces.
- Legs are cut with a knife - also along the joints.
- Ribs are cut from the ridge and sternum.
- They divide the dorsal vertebrae and divide them by the piece.
- Moving to the pelvic part, they also carve the carcass along the joints.
This method is convenient if the meat is divided between families, if it is dried or smoked. The absence of an ax allows you to get clean meat - without dirt and pieces of bones. This method is good for a private farmstead, but not for industry.
In meat processing plants, they operate exactly according to GOSTs, dividing the carcass into the required number of cuts. After cutting get the following parts:
- first hind quarters;
- second fore quarter;
- third back quarter (pistol cut);
- fourth fore quarter.
In turn, each quarter consists of several parts, each of which has its own name - shin front or back, cervical cut, shoulder part, etc.
Use of skin and bones
Do not throw away the horse's skin - this is a valuable leather raw material. Incredibly durable. Elite shoes are made of horse leather - it is distinguished by its special luster and wear resistance. Also made of horse skin:
- bags;
- belts;
- key holders and business card holders;
- hats - caps, berets, etc.
There are no horse bones in such quantity that their processing was put on stream. But in principle, they can be used as well as cattle bones - for the production of bone meal. The latter goes to feed livestock and poultry, as well as fertilizer.
How to store horse meat?
Horse meat - perishable meat. It should be stored immediately after cutting.
Methods for storing horse meat are as follows:
- To freeze. Frozen horse meat is stored for about 6 months. If you keep the meat longer, its taste and texture change. Small pieces are stored wrapped in foil. Large ones are in vacuum containers. It is forbidden to freeze horsemeat repeatedly. Do not wash meat before freezing.
- Cool. Chilled horse meat is stored for only three days. They put it in the refrigerator by placing it in airtight containers or in enameled dishes. Coarsely chopped meat is stored better and longer.
- To dry. In dried form, horse meat is stored for two years. To prevent dried meat from spoiling, store it in a dark and cool place. The drying process begins with rubbing the meat with salt. Then it is dried in an oven at 50 ° C. Dried horsemeat is used later for cooking - it can be boiled or fried.
Also, horsemeat can be harvested for future use by smoking and drying.
Breeds of horses for slaughter
Not all breeds of horses differ in delicious meat. Any horse meat is, in principle, edible, but in most breeds the meat is tasteless. But in some breeds, for example, Kazakh, Yakut, New Altai, on the contrary it is very palatable, juicy, marble. 220-240 kg of meat is obtained from one individual with a live weight of 400 kg.
There are two types of horse meat - diet and marble, it is received, respectively, from young animals and adult animals not older than 2 years.
If a farmer wants to engage in horse breeding for meat, he needs to choose a breed suitable for his area. In addition, horses whose meat will be used for culinary purposes have the following requirements:
- It is desirable that animals lead a herd lifestyle.
- The breed must be adapted to local climatic conditions.
- If horses will be bred at the stable, preference is given to heavy breeds.
- In horses of meat breeds, usually an elongated strong body, short stocky legs, and a broad back.
Meat breeds of horses:
Breed | Short description |
Yakutskaya | The most hardy breed. They can withstand frost under 60 degrees. The breed is used as a transport, as well as a source of meat and milk. The weight of an adult horse reaches 500 kg. |
Kushumskaya | Previously, this breed was supplied to the cavalry regiments. Today it is used in the meat and dairy direction. The meat is very tasty. Of the several subspecies of the breed for meat, the main and massive subspecies are most often bred. |
Bashkir | Hardy horses withstanding forty degrees of frost. The breed is meat and milk. The weight of the mare is 415 kg, the stallion is 470 kg. Slaughter yield - 51-55%. |
Kazakh | Hardy breed with a very high immunity. Maximum slaughter yield - 60%. The height of the animals is 1 m 35 cm. Weight - 330-360 kg. |
Novokirgizskaya | Relate to breeds of meat and dairy direction. The weight of mares reaches 500 kg. |
Adaevskaya | The breed is distinguished by a good disposition and devotion. Weight - 420-450 kg. |
Altai | Large horses obtained by crossing local horses with heavy trucks. Weight - 460-490 kg. |
The slaughter process is one of the most difficult and crucial events in the life of the farmer. In order to do the job efficiently, you need to have strong nerves, a baggage of special knowledge and a firm confidence in the need for an undertaking. And then everything will work out.
Posted by
12
Russia. City Novosibirsk
Publications: 276 Comments: 1