Meat Processing and a Quick Trip to Ellinwood, KS

On the 23rd of February Dr Travis O’Quinn helped me set up the chance to attend Dr Terry Houser and Dr John Wolf’s Meat Processing class where they were dispatching and processing 4 Angus heifers. I was sure counting my blessings here on this one, as I know I had been very fortunate to get this opportunity! Let me tell you what! The longer I stay at K-State the harder it’s going to be for me to leave. If not just for the absolutely incredible (and I do mean just INCREADIBLE) amount of education opportunities, the people here have just been so so kind to me! They are all just the most welcoming crowd. All you really need to do is simply ask for help or assistance and half the time they just about bend over backwards trying to get you on track! I cannot even begin to tell you how appreciative I have been of that!

So the Meat Processing class was excellent! I had really enjoyed sitting in on that. I have been to different abattoirs before, but having the meats professors there explaining every stage and the different quality assurance checks that must be done on the carcass throughout each of those stages was very valuable for me to see. As far as meat science goes (from what I understand), the US has completed far more research in the field of beef than has been done in Australia and I would really like to become more involved in that while I’m over here and have the chance.

The weekend from Friday the 24th February to Sunday the 26th I rode down to Ellinwood with a mate of mine from the house that I am living in at K-State. We were headed over there to visit with her family and check out their business, Schlessiger Farms. They were fantastic! A really fun, genuine and happy family, I had a lot of fun that weekend. Friday we arrived with enough daylight for a little tour of their all Angus commercial cow calf herd and the grower yard for their replacement heifers and steers intended for the local ILS (Innovative Livestock Services) Feedyard. That night I met a few very entertaining locals and managed to find ties with a man that buys pigs from the same place in Colorado that my cousins used to get their 4H pigs.

Because of the Schlessiger’s long-standing relationship with ILS in Ellinwood, Saturday we were able to go in and tour around a little. We stopped in at the feed mill and bunkers for a good look at the ration ingredients. They steam roll corn in the mill here. As a little side note, corn is largely readily available for livestock producers in Midwestern America, hence the given name ‘the corn belt of the US’ therefore a lot of producers I have talked to tend to use it to some degree within their stock feed. They also used WDG (wet distillers grain) in the ration, which smells awfully sweet and the cattle seem to love it. What was interesting to me though was how well it seemed to retain its heat from the ethanol plant. The further you dug down into the pile, the hotter it was but they informed me they’d never had to worry about fires with it which also caught my attention a little. The consistency was like mud or cookie dough I guess you could even say. It was good to be able to get up and have a proper look at it. I hear a lot about it being in the US and I could be wrong, but I haven’t seen it used in Australia yet.

We toured the pens and had a look through all their black cattle. Honestly though, I absolutely could not believe the amount of Holsteins being fed there. They just about had designated pens for all those dairy breeds. I’d have liked to know now looking back on it whether it had something to do with DOF or ration mix like they do with the Wagyu back home, I never thought to ask at the time but I will get onto that!

On the last day in Ellinwood we went to a Schlessiger family member’s baptism and a family brunch followed by an afternoon killing time shooting pistols and clays. Now there's another of the many many reasons that I have so much fun in America!