Meat not setting properly after slaughter

[phil the cat]

hello, I’m just wondering if anyone else has had any experience of this as I’m looking to stop it happening via medication/breeding etc

Over the last 2 or so years we’ve had the odd fat beast that has been slaughtered & delivered to the butcher deadweight where the fat and meat hasn’t set properly. I’ll put a video on to illustrate but the fat seems to be sloppy. Our vets thought it may be down to the animals going in to slaughter with a temperature due to pneumonia or similar so we’ve been treating with rispoval intranasal but we’ve just had a seemingly healthy steer who was treated 3 weeks previous and still had it.
Another theory was that it may be some double muscling in the back breeding as the cows are all mostly lim but there’s a bit of Belgium blue in some of the older cows. This steer was out of one such older cow and another chap had similar problems with bb in the past and put it down to ‘double mucsling’ The steer was E3 and 400kg at 17m so intensive continental system. Any ideas? We’re sending around 80/year and it’s 2-3/year with the problem. Thanks phil TC

 

[phil the cat]

 

[Water Wheel]

View attachment 735996

Have you any contacts with Sutton Bonnington? Ask them your in the right county.

 

[Northeastfarmer]

Usually the carcass won’t set due to not having enough energy in it, this is mainly on old thin dairy cows straight out of the parlour with no hard feed...never heard of it on a Young finished beast

 

[Sharpy]

@Kiwi Pete ?

 

[milkloss]

Pour on will cause this I believe but only within the withdrawal period. I’m sure this won’t be your problem though.

 

[phil the cat]

Thanks for the replys. They only have a pour on as calves after grass so at around 10m then in the pen after that. Is Sutton bonnington a lab or similar? Sorry, haven’t heard of them

 

[phil the cat]

We’ve recently put in some ad lib minerals to supplement the ones added as part of the ration.

Ration is:

100kg wheat straw
1350kg rolled barley
750kg beet nuts
900kg kw blend
20kg vistacell
20kg intensive beef minerals

 

[yellowbelly]

Is Sutton bonnington a lab or similar? Sorry, haven’t heard of them

Nottingham university vet school and vet research lab,

 

[Water Wheel]

Nottingham university vet school and vet research lab,

And Food Science, Agriculture, Animal nutrition Etc

 

[phil the cat]

Nottingham university vet school and vet research lab,

Yes got you sorry, we use Scarsdale vets so they’re quite closely linked to that already and think had asked there. Apparently when the meat has been hung there’s little point testing and blood tests on the live beast didn’t show anything other than bits of pneumonia (pi3 is it?)

 

[Jonty49]

I remember my dad and another farmer once on about this and the slaughterhouse said it was down to stress, the beast had been climbing the walls apparently.

 

[phil the cat]

I remember my dad and another farmer once on about this and the slaughterhouse said it was down to stress, the beast had been climbing the walls apparently.

Thanks for the reply, sounds reasonable

 

[Paddington]

There is a condition that pigs can get at slaughter which produces pale, acidic, oozy type flesh which is put down to the pigs being stressed immediately before slaughter. Could be the same for cattle ?

 

[Werzle]

Perhaps they were wild or nasty types.

 

[Chasingmytail]

I took some lambs and pig to one local abattoir. The lambs came back totally inedible (tough as old boots even the chops) and the pork was sloppy and just weird. I put it down to dropping the fridge temp too fast after as they were probably too busy. Never had a problem with any other slaughter never went back. Been killing lambs, beef and pork for 15 years that was the only conclusion that the flesh was too warm, rigormortis hadn't set in and they dropped the temp in the fridge it made the fibres mega tight on the lambs and flabby on the pork.

All animals are stressed in slaughter yards like I said Ive done meat for years and imagine some are more stressed than others yet haven't had issues.

 

[Nearly]

There is a condition that pigs can get at slaughter which produces pale, acidic, oozy type flesh which is put down to the pigs being stressed immediately before slaughter. Could be the same for cattle ?

PSE muscle.
Heard of it at college, Pale Soft Exudate, we were told it was stress.

 

[organicguy]

Another condition caused by stress causes dark cutting meat, had a problem once when I left blokes to load cattle, got out, chased around field and then loaded and slaughtered an hour later, cut dark and tough.

 

[egbert]

We've had it twice in 20 years, both times in fairly plain beasts.
Stress and pour ons deffo not a factor as far as i'm aware, although one of them had been knocked about by pneumonia some time beforehand.
(double muscling not an issue either!)

 

[Northeastfarmer]

I would of thought stress would cause the meat to be tough not sloppy