We name them, but... they get names like: Turkey, Sir Loin, Hamburger, Chocolate, or no name at all.
But I'm fencing off more of our property to start again. My grandfather was a small rancher and we always had a cow or two in his herd for raising our own beef. I don't want to do it on the same scale as my grandfather. First of all I don't have that much acreage but I do want to raise my own beef again. I'm also going to be raising my own chickens, some just for eggs and some fryers. We'll bring the beef to the slaughter house (too big a job for me to want to even try) but we'll probably process our own chickens. I currently have a few ducks that need to be eaten. I bought the ducks for my working dogs to learn how to herd them and I'm done with them for now. I probably won't raise ducks again until we have our pond dug. I'm not wild about pork generally enough to want to have that much pork in my freezer otherwise pigs would be in the food chain too.
We raise beef, and still send our butcher steer out for processing; hubby has a thing about knives (he cut himself with a machete when he was younger, so he and big knives are not friends). Suits me fine to send them out, even though it costs, as I really don't want to cut it up. [Or dispose of hte parts you don't use.] Its very nice to fill the freezer with all those neat white packages, that someone else prepared for you.
My inlaws, just the two of them, eat way more beef than Shayne and I eat, its amazing how much they go through, especially hamburger. But, I think they eat little else, and we have chicken, fish.
