Locker plants are swamped

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? For those of you that use your local meat locker.
I called my farmer buddy to see about getting stocked back up on burger and he told me that it's crazy delays at getting critters in. Luckily he keeps slots reserved throughout the year we will be able to get a 1200 lb open cow in next week. He's got people calling him that have never got critters from him trying to buy one of his reserved slots in the locker. He called the 3 lockers that he deals with this morning and the first open slot is 15 June.
Is it this way nation wide or just some quirk around here?
Made some calls to my kids and buddies this morning and we decided to just grind her up into all burger since the future situation is unknown.
 
Our local meat locker is well stocked but they only carry high end meats so their prices are 2-3x anywhere else. Their hamburger is $10/lb and steaks start at $12/lb.
I live in cattle country so their supply line is just fine.
 
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critters?
confused2.gif
 
Originally Posted by loneryder
Could you explain how a meat locker works?


The one I worked at in my teens in the 70s in Pa was a butcher shop that did mostly customer supplied sides of beef and pig with a huge walk in 0 degree freezer that had lockable drawers that customers kept their frozen meat in. Like a bank's safe deposit area for frozen meat. They also had meat displays and sold over the counter and probably ordered sides for people for custom cutting as well. Long gone, glad to hear they still exist.
 
I haven't seen a locker in 40-50 years.

When households started to purchase freezers themselves then that was the beginning of the end of the lockers.
 
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Wow... around here there are meat lockers and meat markets and of coarse packing houses.
At a meat locker the farmer pulls up in the back with his steer or cow in a trailer they off load him, shoot him in the head, gut him, dehead and deskin him. What is left is called a hanging carcas. That carcus goes in a cooler to age. When the aging period is over they bring the carcus into the trim room where its cut up and packaged how the customer wants it.

When I order a steer my buddy pens it up separate and feeds it food that is heavy with corn for 90-100 days to marble the meat. Just prior to the cutting and packaging the locker will call you and ask several questions like how many steaks per package, how much burger per package, what do you want done with the organ meat, how thick do you want the steaks and a whole host of other questions. Then after it's well frozen they call you and you go get it in box's.
Nothing better! Mmmm num num
 
Pim not so around here. Meat lockers are very abundant and in high demand. Big big difference in quality of meat in farm raised vs feedlot roided up meat.
 
Originally Posted by AZjeff
Originally Posted by loneryder
Could you explain how a meat locker works?

a huge walk in 0 degree freezer that had lockable drawers that customers kept their frozen meat in. Like a bank's safe deposit area for frozen meat.


So what happens if the power goes out for a few days after a storm or the refrigeration conks out? Is the meat insured? Are there backup systems? Just checking in case I want to get myself frozen at the end.
 
Originally Posted by P10crew
Then after it's well frozen they call you and you go get it in box's.
Nothing better! Mmmm num num


You had me until this. Frozen? Cook up a frozen steak? Wouldn't a TV dinner be just as good?
 
[Linked Image]

Aging room at a locker plant.

Mmmm now I want to thaw out some T bones for the babe and I.
Ati..... you live in a different world than I my friend.
 
Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by AZjeff
Originally Posted by loneryder
Could you explain how a meat locker works?

a huge walk in 0 degree freezer that had lockable drawers that customers kept their frozen meat in. Like a bank's safe deposit area for frozen meat.


So what happens if the power goes out for a few days after a storm or the refrigeration conks out? Is the meat insured? Are there backup systems? Just checking in case I want to get myself frozen at the end.


You looking to get a meat locker or looking to get frozen when you die?
 
Some of the most crooked business places on the planet earth. You take your fine 18 month old steer that has been coddled and fed sweet feed and is fat and tender. Call the butcher, he comes and kills and guts, dehides and hangs the beef. He then cuts and packages it and places it in your locker. He charges by the pound for this and a monthly fee for the locker. What you MAY end up getting is somebodies aged out dairy cow and your beef is sold fresh in the market. Happens most the time this way. Find a trustworthy butcher and locker and stick with them Sort of like an honest salesman and car dealer. rare commodities.
 
Originally Posted by P10crew
Mmmm now I want to thaw out some T bones for the babe and I.
Ati..... you live in a different world than I my friend.


Plenty of frozen food in the supermarket, I just assume if people go to all the trouble of cooking a steak they would want one that is fresh, not frozen.
 
Originally Posted by Wolf359
Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by AZjeff
Originally Posted by loneryder
Could you explain how a meat locker works?

a huge walk in 0 degree freezer that had lockable drawers that customers kept their frozen meat in. Like a bank's safe deposit area for frozen meat.


So what happens if the power goes out for a few days after a storm or the refrigeration conks out? Is the meat insured? Are there backup systems? Just checking in case I want to get myself frozen at the end.


You looking to get a meat locker or looking to get frozen when you die?


I'm looking to get frozen INSTEAD of dying.
 
Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by P10crew
Mmmm now I want to thaw out some T bones for the babe and I.
Ati..... you live in a different world than I my friend.


Plenty of frozen food in the supermarket, I just assume if people go to all the trouble of cooking a steak they would want one that is fresh, not frozen.




Sounds just like a city slicker.
 
Originally Posted by P10crew
? For those of you that use your local meat locker.
I called my farmer buddy to see about getting stocked back up on burger and he told me that it's crazy delays at getting critters in. Luckily he keeps slots reserved throughout the year we will be able to get a 1200 lb open cow in next week. He's got people calling him that have never got critters from him trying to buy one of his reserved slots in the locker. He called the 3 lockers that he deals with this morning and the first open slot is 15 June.
Is it this way nation wide or just some quirk around here?
Made some calls to my kids and buddies this morning and we decided to just grind her up into all burger since the future situation is unknown.


You say some quirk around here. I thought you were from Not Here.
My dad stored his deer in lockers and we would be eating it all the time. Now I am pretty much vegetarian except for chicken. I have a dog otherwise would go all veg. Just never picked it up from my dad. I have a picture of him and a deer draped across the hood of his Cadillac, the old kind of Cadillac. He tried to teach me hunting, I didn't want to kill anything with eyes looking at me.
 
Originally Posted by atikovi
Originally Posted by Wolf359

You looking to get a meat locker or looking to get frozen when you die?


I'm looking to get frozen INSTEAD of dying.


Well then look up Alcor. They use liquid nitrogen and they always have a bunch on hand. It basically just boils off so no need for the electricity to run out. I just don't think nano technology will ever be where they claim. Like how Fusion energy is still not quite there and Einstein's EPR paradox from 1935 still doesn't really have a good answer.
 
Meet lockers are a still around here but most of them are used as slaughterhouses/butchers if that puts it in perspective for the city folk. Butchers get hanging sides of animals and process them into the meat you cook. A slaughterhouse takes in the animals live on the hoof and turns them into the hanging sides. Meat lockers around here do both the slaughtering and the butchering packaging and freezing of the meat and also some storage.

The meat lockers deal in whole or parts of animals so there is no way you could get buy not freezing it. The whole fresh never frozen grass fed no hormone thing doesn't mean much to me. If it is decent beef to begin with it will be decent beef when you eat it. My brother in law raises fat cattle in a feed lot and does the hormone thing. I would rather have that that whatever junk the grocerie stores are trying to pass off as a good cut of meat.
 
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