Slaughter Free Leather Not Selling As Expected

[StevenSiegel]

Steven,

I've been following this thread on and off, and having read your most recent post I feel a need to reply. Any time a new product comes out, there will be positive and negative feedback. Even when we think we are doing something right in "creating" a new offering, it will not always be seen as the "next big thing". I guess my best advice would be to take it as a lesson and keep doing the great work customers say you're known for.

Hi,

Hi,

Thank you for the encouragement.

I don't understand the "rationale" of some of these threads. For someone who did not grow up in the email age, some of these threads just don't make any sense to me. It feels like having a horse depleted of water. You bring it water. The horse not only refuses to drink, but the animal turns on you for having brought it what it needs to stay alive.

Can you help me in responding to some of these threads which close the minds of others to new ideas and "turns the clock backwards instead of forward?"

My primary intent is to help others. My secondary intent is to add value. My third intent is to profit from my work after the first two.

Anyway, I would like to put in a plug for the "Ask Veralane" archives which are on our website. For many years, while Verlane was alive, we employed her to answer any and all questions with no editorial restrictions. And, for those people that are interested in an eclectic of offers of free leather which we have recently developed, bargain pricing on leathers and reproductions from private edition tanning and hide manuals (from my private library), you may want to subscribe to our email specials.

Now, that I am over 60, maybe I can have an "excuse" for being a bit ornery.

Best Regards,

Steve

[bead]

You're a trustworthy partnership.

Maybe we will have chance to cooperation,

[bruce johnson]

Hi Bruce,

I have a question for you regarding hides from your personal and family experience: I have a lot of experience in sorting leather made from hides world wide. Currently, many of the US heavy native steers will have weight run-off in the ribs, but this is not present in the Continental Breeds which come from Canada or the "Contintent". This is the reason that we will only use Continental Breeds in the production of our skiritng. My question is this: Besides feeding practices, do you believe that the "stock" that is currently raised is different than what was raised in earlier days? I would be very interested to know about this and I know that you would provide a thoughtful response.

Best Regards,

Steve

Steve,

I have had a few emails overnight from people wanting to know a little more. Here's a little more background. My great-grandfather fed cattle, grandfather fed cattle. One great-grandfather was a buyer for John Morell. These were back in the days of the big terminal markets. My dad and two uncles were packer buyers, my dad bought hogs, two uncles bought fat cattle. One is still doing it and has since about 1965. I'll be talking to him this weekend and get his take, but I have some of my own thoughts too. I worked in the packing house and got about every crap job a guy could get. My brother didn't, and went on to get a PhD in meat science. My son works at cattle auctions 5 days a week. He sees cull cattle and feeders sell everyday. We are in a dairy area and the beef cattle are cow-calf or wintertime grass cattle/summers on irrigated clover. We aren't in a huge cattle feeding area other than Harris at Coalinga. They are kind of vertically integrated with their own feedlot and slaughter plant, so they are not the usual pattern of most.

My thoughts on the fall off in hide weights I think may be due to a couple of factors. Age of the cattle at slaughter (PC term now is "harvest") is younger. One is the genetic base of the cattle. I can't say that the angus cattle have thinner hides necessarily, but they have created a pretty good promotional program for their beef so black hided English influenced cattle are popular. Cattle feeding areas have shifted south. There are still some feedyards in the northern plains, but the big guys are in the southern plains - KS,TX,OK. It can be argued that those cattle might be a little thinner hided due to that area not going through the same sustained winters of the northern cattle. Also there is more brahma influenced cattle in the south for heat resistance, and those hides are supposed to be thinner too. It used to be that a lot of upper midwest farmers had a feedlot behind the barn. They farm all summer, put up some silage and grain, sell the excess on the grain market. In the winter they fed 50-300 cattle. They may be home raised calves or bought feeders. Those guys are not as common as they used to be. The town I grew up in the midwest still has a weekly cattle sale. There are not as many salebarns running back there because there just aren't the cattle numbers to support them there used to be.

Dairies have gotten bigger and have had some buy-out programs to help subsidize reduction of cattle numbers when milk prices go too low to be profitable. If you follow the 50% rule, for every heifer born that may go into the milking string, there is a dairy bull born that will end up a dairy feedlot steer. The old saw is that dairy breed hides are thinner.

So in a nutshell, I think the runoff in domestic hides could be due to a few factors. Younger cattle, beef breeds represented in US cattle, climate, and the dairy influence.

[JC Javelle]

JC,

I sure respect other opinions, but have a few observations here. As you will read, I have some biases. First off, McDonalds may be a big beef buyer, but percentage wise very few cattle are specifically geared entirely to McDonalds. The biggest value in a carcass are the prime cuts - McDonalds are not grinding $10/pound filets and T-bones for $1 double cheeseburgers. They are grinding meat from cull cows and less valuable meat cuts for hamburger. I just have to ask about the statement that corn kills cows. What's the basis of that? I have decent enough family background in cattle feeding, meat packing and processing, and just enough nutrtional courses to be dangerous, I just don't see the correlation. Moldy corn can do it, cattle not acclimated to a "hot ration" can have problems, but corn as a rule does not kill cattle offhand. To answer one of your questions - yes, the hides from the cattle fed for slaughter are used in the leather industry. Some are fed cattle and some are older cull dairy and beef cattle. That is pretty much the source of most all the hides except for the identified slaughter free hides sold by Steve Siegel. Even the slaughter free hides may have come from a pasture or a feedlot. As far as the quality difference between the forage fed cattle vs. feedlot cattle - hard to say because anymore very few cattle are finished on forage and their hides specifically separated and tanned to be sold as grass cattle hides. It would be interesting, some rawhiders have definite opinions, but the tanned hides are just for the most part fed cattle. Probably the biggest difference in decreasing hide quality and size has to do with "progress" in the cattle business. Hides are smaller, and the quality is not what the older guys tell us it used to be. These cattle have been bred up to gain faster, more efficiently, and result in a more consistant product at a younger age than cattle in the past. The hides are still a by-product, not the primary goal.

My great-grandfather used to buy a trainload of long yearling and two year old feeder cattle to put into the feedlot. He fed them and they went on the train to Chicago. He used to feed a pen of "steamers" for the fun of it - big overdone cattle whose steak would have an inch or more of fat left on it and spill over the plate. They were called steamers because they were served to the wealthy on steamships. You aren't going to find many cattle like that anymore. Think how big those hides were.

We've all seen the videos on slaughterhouse abuses. They happen, but aren't widespread in the industry. There has been a lot of improvements in livestock handling, and slaughter procedures in the last century and some would argue that improvements have doubled in the last 10 years. I just have to take exception that there are no ethics in the slaughter industry.

Respectfully,

Hi Bruce,

I am not a leather specialist, and I have rarely if anything to do with the living, breathing, bleeding animal side of my food. So please forgive me for a rather large amount of ignorance concerning the production side of things. But I do like to share what I know, so don't bite my head off it I may be wrong. I do like constructive criticism and learning new sides of things, probably to a fault.

There is the knowledge out there, whether correct or not (it is all opinions in the end), that the big I think three or four meat production companies more or less rule the food production world. McDonalds is supposedly the biggest purchaser of beef, chicken, and potatoes in the industry. Therefore, it is probably assumed, though probably not without too much falsities likely, that the biggest produced products are geared to make the biggest buyer happy. It is considered that even the meat packed in the grocery stores is an end product of what the biggest buyer wants. Cut quality aside, it comes from the same cow that was fed with the purpose of probably being a McDonalds cow. Now, not all beef is this way surely because not all cattle breeds are raised/produced for this purpose.

Corn kills cows is an indirect statement I suppose. Corn is considered to be unhealthy. It may not be to the degree that is published for the public to hear, or it may be worse. Corn is believed to cause ulcers in cows so large that they will punch holes in the sides of the animal. You can reach your hand, from outside of the cow, to inside one of the cows affected stomachs. This, among other related things likely, supposedly, can and will kill cows. That is why corn is supposedly fed during such a short period of time, and specifically at the end of their lives and not throughout them. It isn't quick though, but a gradual build up of things what corn supposedly does to their systems that will kill them if continued over an extended period of time.

Out of curiosity, I would like to know how many different companies there are that do slaughter animals, and their differences in methods from feeding, storage, killing and on down to dividing. As far as I can tell, there are the big ones (whose names I can't recall at the moment), and they control the majority of food put in our grocery stores. Documentaries, even seemingly unbiased ones, can only give so much information.

I am particularly interested in the quality difference between the pasture grown and, I suppose, feed lot beef hides. I would like to know if they feel any different between their qualities, like the feel of the hide, its durability, its weight, etc. Skin is skin, yes, but is there a difference between the health of the hide, if that is an applicable question?

[roo4u]

im a peta person....People for Eating Tasty Animals......mmmmmmm

but seriously, when the carcass removal people go by and pick up dead critters the hides are sold to the same place that buys the hides from the butcher shops...so i think more people get leather from field death cows than we think.

[whinewine]

Steven:

I just ordered 2 hides... the price is absolutely right and I have no philosophical axe to grind - I sell to vegans/pagans/cannibals/omnivores & all persuasions in between lol.

[Go2Tex]

The issue here is one of semantics stemming from the demonization of the entire meat industry and anything to do with humans generally by people who have been brainwashed by the self loathing, anti-human liberal media. The idea that death by any means other than dying in one's sleep, doctor assisted suicide or a drug overdose can be anything other than entirely unpleasant, is as laughable and deserving of complete ridicule as Algore's man caused global warming.

Anyone who would pay 10x more for something because it was killed by "mother nature" rather than a captive bolt slamming against its skull, or a lead slug from a politically incorrect "assault rifle", deserves to be taken to the cleaners by every snake oil salesman who comes along...... and I mean that in the good way, Steve.

If you can sell grain damaged leather for 10x what it would otherwise sell for, I say more power to ya but I'm still trying to figure out how to sell the undamaged, horrifically slaughtered stuff I have on hand due to the bottom falling out of the "normal" market because some smarmy liberal politicians decided to force banks to give home mortgages to people who couldn't afford to over-eat at McDonalds 7 days a week.

But, if some sandal wearing, tree hugging, whale saving, earth worshipping man hater comes along and is looking for some humanely euthanized cow hide leather chaps to wear to an Obama rally, I'll just tell her that all my leather comes from happy cows raised in my back yard....or, maybe down the road a piece.... but, hey, they died,... eh, passed away, with smiles on their faces and a full belly of natural, organically grown, Coastal/Bermuda wild grass hay. And if she believes that, maybe I can sell her a nice, earth friendly, cat-o-nine-tails whip to complete her ensamble.

[UKRay]

Okay folks, thanks to Mr Siegel's generosity (many thanks for the opportunity Steve!) I'm now in a position to pass constructive comments on the hide he sent me.

First off: The side is very big and slightly darker in colour than I am used to seeing (veg tan over here in the UK tends to be pale coloured). The extra length is extremely useful for making strap goods and I'm in no doubt, having started to work with the leather, that this is a quality product.

It cuts very well with a plough gauge, the rather stiff texture helps the cut.

It has a number of fairly superficial surface marks that are of no consequence - in fact, IMHO, they tend to add character to the leather.

If I were to be picky, I'd say there are a lot more marks on this hide than the ones I purchase from my UK supplier but this is entirely in keeping with its story - we have already been told it was dragged, but lets not get carried away with this. The marks are small and inconsequential and the leather, IMHO, is completely suitable for purpose. I have worked with it this afternoon and it is good to use.

Compared with the British leather I have been using recently, this leather tools exceptionally well. It is dryer than my regular British tanned leather and soaks up the casing water like a sponge but takes an embossed impression very well indeed. The leather also dyes and finishes well. I gave it 2 x coats of Leather Balm and Atom Wax and it looks great!

Jim's question about enzyme activity and longevity will take quite a while to prove or disprove, but to be honest, on the surface I can't see any reason why this leather won't last just as long as any other leather. If I didn't know its history I wouldn't question it for a minute.

For anyone in Europe considering buying this leather, the price compares extremely well with UK suppliers but as you might expect, shipping a single hide from the US, at around 60 dollars, is a tad too high for me to feel entirely comfortable. I suspect shipping a larger quantity will bring the price down considerably.

Right now, I can't see any reason not to buy 'Happy Cow' leather and if you have the gumption to come up with a good sales pitch you may find you can expand your market. I'm certainly going to try.

I'm happy to answer questions about the way this leather handles and cuts so fire away. If I don't have an answer I'll tell you!

Ray

[rawhide1]

Thanks for the good laugh!! And also for expressing my own thoughts in such a elegant way.

Mike

The issue here is one of semantics stemming from the demonization of the entire meat industry and anything to do with humans generally by people who have been brainwashed by the self loathing, anti-human liberal media. The idea that death by any means other than dying in one's sleep, doctor assisted suicide or a drug overdose can be anything other than entirely unpleasant, is as laughable and deserving of complete ridicule as Algore's man caused global warming.

Anyone who would pay 10x more for something because it was killed by "mother nature" rather than a captive bolt slamming against its skull, or a lead slug from a politically incorrect "assault rifle", deserves to be taken to the cleaners by every snake oil salesman who comes along...... and I mean that in the good way, Steve.

If you can sell grain damaged leather for 10x what it would otherwise sell for, I say more power to ya but I'm still trying to figure out how to sell the undamaged, horrifically slaughtered stuff I have on hand due to the bottom falling out of the "normal" market because some smarmy liberal politicians decided to force banks to give home mortgages to people who couldn't afford to over-eat at McDonalds 7 days a week.

But, if some sandal wearing, tree hugging, whale saving, earth worshipping man hater comes along and is looking for some humanely euthanized cow hide leather chaps to wear to an Obama rally, I'll just tell her that all my leather comes from happy cows raised in my back yard....or, maybe down the road a piece.... but, hey, they died,... eh, passed away, with smiles on their faces and a full belly of natural, organically grown, Coastal/Bermuda wild grass hay. And if she believes that, maybe I can sell her a nice, earth friendly, cat-o-nine-tails whip to complete her ensamble.

[Denise]

JC Javelle,

Absolutely no offense intended, but your comments are a perfect example of how much misinformation is getting to the public from people with strong agendas and how far away most people in North America are from the "living, breathing, bleeding animal side" of food production. And we as leatherworkers need to do our own educating of customers about the realities of where the leather came from and that it IS NOT the result of abuse of animals. For example, you said " I don't know if the hides from cows raised specifically for meat consumption are used in the leather industry or not." Yes. The truth is that pretty much ALL cattle are raised primarily for meat. Even old show cattle and rodeo animals end up there eventually. They don't call them "bologna bulls" for nothing! And this is where all the hides come from, except for these ones offered by Mr. Seigel. No cattle are raised primarily for hides. They aren't worth that much! Leather is a by-product of the meat industry, plain and simple.

"Corn is believed to cause ulcers in cows so large that they will punch holes in the sides of the animal. You can reach your hand, from outside of the cow, to inside one of the cows affected stomachs." This is plain and simply not true. If you can do that, the animal is dead (unless it has had surgery to put that hole there permanently.) Fact - grain overload (any kind) can kill animals, but it is an acute condition where a bovine gets into large quantities of grain when their ruman flora (the bugs in the stomach that start the digestion process) are not used to them. They don't ulcerate and rupture. It affects their body's acid/base balance and electrolytes and they get wobbly, go down, can't get up, go to sleep and die. One of the more peaceful ways to go actually. (No, I'm not kidding. I've seen and treated it as a vet.) This is why cattle feeders take such care when they start increasing the grain in the ration to do it slowly, letting the rumen flora change to the type needed to digest that volume of grain. Cattle also die from eating alfalfa (a common grass and hay) when they are not used to it. These ones do bloat, which causes their death, but they don't rupture either. Cattle are put on high grain diets at the end of their life to gain fat more quickly and efficiently. Cattle can fatten on grass, but it has to be really good quality grass, lots of it, in a breed that fattens easily. It is a lot more expensive and difficult to finish cattle on grass than on grain, and that is probably the major reason for feeding grain. It comes down to economics. We don't have the land base or climate in North America to fatten the number of animals on grass that we eat, nor are most consumers willing to spend the extra money that fattening cattle in this way requires. Grass fed cattle in North America are a niche market for the people who will spend the extra dollars and from the producers willing to take the risk and put the effort into private marketing.

As far as the beef industry goes, fast food outlets don't have as much say as they may have on something like poultry production. Like Bruce said, McDonalds buys hamburger. McDonalds has had an influence on the way the slaughter houses do their work, but it doesn't extend down the line to the beef producers. Cattlemen are working to produce steak, not hamburger. That is where the money is - top graded young animals with a fair amount of fat. Restaurant steaks are a huge market in North America, and it is the restaurant trade more than anything else that dictates the type of cuts available in your local grocery store. You end up with a lot of hamburger even from the top end animals, let alone the cull cows and bulls (old breeding stock and milk cows whose days are over) so no one grows and feeds animals for that market. While there are only a few major companies who own a lot of the meat packing plants, there are still lots of smaller packing plants out there servicing their local communities. And even the major companies do not (yet) own or feed all (or even the majority, I would think) of the cattle they slaughter. Beef production is still, at its roots, started on the privately owned ranch or farm. It isn't till the cattle are ready to hit the feedlot that large companies get really interested in them, and there are still lots of smaller, privately owned and family owned feedlots in North America too. The family farm is still very much a part of animal production, especially in the beef industry compared to other meats. Groups with agendas and big budgets try to portray it all as "big business" trying to rule the world, and it just isn't true - but they get the press. Family farm owners are too busy taking care of their animals to put out press releases and make videos. I'm not saying that big business isn't involved, but not to the extent and not in the way a lot of the "documentaries" portray it.

JC, I wrote this with the intention of clearing up some misconceptions and helping you learn more about the beef industry and where our leather comes from. We don't ranch full time, but we do run a few feeder cattle on our grass in the summer and a lot of our friends are ranchers. Making a living with cattle is getting tougher all the time. The inputs are higher and the profits are less. The last thing our industry needs is lots of false information being strewn all over the internet and the media, but that is just what is happening more and more. Writing this post is my attempt to get some of the "actual facts" out there. I hope it helps.