Collaboration: how to use the whole cow

Hi!

At http://granja.caimito.net me and my family are trying to do things the right way. We purchased a 45 hectare piece of land in Andalusia, Spain, where people raise mostly pigs and also some cows. We do not know much about most of the topics, but as I'm from the world of software development I am used to a steep learning curve and collaboration across organisational boundaries.

There are already several websites that allow people to purchase grass-fed beef. Pieces of cows are sold online and when the whole animal has been sold it gets slaughtered. That avoids wastes and seems to be more respectful. We want to follow that model once we have our first cow ready for market.

We have secured the collaboration of a local butcher for the actual processing of the meat and we know that we have to use a certified slaughterhouse in order to legally sell meat.

What is an open question is "what to do with the non-editable parts?"

I have created a Google Doc at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18LwhMDwW2hP6eaRbYoHlSdjx_t0gdbTW6c4BwrtIDQc/edit?usp=sharing

and my intent is to collaborate with all of you to gather as much detailed information as possible. The Google Doc is set up so that anyone with the link can edit it and leave comments.

I will add stuff myself as I research the topic. For example, I remember reading somewhere that the cow's blood can be turned into fertilizer. Or the stomachs can be fed to flies to produce larvae and the larvae can be used as chicken feed.

Later on I want to publish the curated version at our public/internal website http://bosque.caimito.net that shows how we work. Others can then also benefit from our mutual research.

Saw this hasn't had any replies.

There's not a lot that is truly inedible on a cow.  The hide isn't really human edible, but can be tanned into leather.  The contents of the GI tract aren't useful, but much of the GI tract is edible, with some extra work.  The stomachs can be eaten as tripe, and most of the intestines can be used for sausage casings.  The blood can be eaten, and all of the organs too.  Lungs are one of the harder organs to use, but the Scottish dish haggis is one option for that.

However many people in the western world aren't used to eating those parts anymore.  So, one option is to use it for dog food.  Our dog gets a raw diet and sourcing enough organ meat to meet his dietary needs would be really hard if I didn't raise meat animals.  Marketing those bits to local raw feeding dog owners might be worth looking into.

Hooves & horns can be used for glue, too. And yeah, here, in the good ol' US of A, we have an awful time, getting our hands on offal, unless we go straight to the farmer. Even then, many don't have any part in that. Most just ship the cattle off, already sold, as whole animals.

I've added Beef Blood Gravy to the gdoc. Also corrected a few misspellings, and added "sausage casings" to the list of uses for intestines. Technically, the stomach can be used as casing as well, but I don't remember the name of that type of sausage.

Blood sausages are a real thing, in the UK, too.