A Minnedosa, Man., family has discovered a way to capture value from cull cattle by butchering the otherwise worthless animals and making dried dog treats from the liver, lungs and meat.
Kim Parish, co-owner of Minalt Dog Treats, said around 10-15 cattle a year are processed in a butchering shed on the family’s farm. Calving season is the busiest time of year because the cooler weather makes butchering a more pleasant task and there are more reject animals available.
Cull cows, bulls and steers with defects such as cancer eye, prolapsed uterus or broken legs that make them unmarketable through normal channels are either picked up or dropped off at the farm by neighbouring ranchers. Sick or dead animals are not accepted.
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“We’ll often keep them here for 10 days or more, depending on if they’ve had injections,” she said. Kim and her husband, both of whom have full-time off-farm jobs, also raise 200 head of sheep.
The most she has paid for an animal is $100, but many producers are simply glad to be rid of them because new animal disposal regulations mean that dead stock is now a significant expense.
The Parishes, who moved to Canada from Britain 11 years ago with their three children, got started in the dog treat business for two reasons. As a dog breeder operating Minalt Kennels, she shows some of her purebred Weimaraner dogs at competitions across the country. When working with dogs, having small treats handy is a necessary part of the training process, she said.
The other reason is that her brother, who still lives in the U.K., operates a dog food company and was able to provide directions on how to build a walk-in drying oven.
The range of dried all-meat products includes beef pieces, sausage sticks made with garlic and flour as a binding agent, and liver and lung strips. Although dogs love offal, the lung treats are sold as “puffed jerky” because some urban dog owners find the organ icky.
The production process is similar to that for making beef jerky, with the raw meat placed on drying racks in the homemade oven, which uses fans, dehumidifiers and heaters to maintain a certain temperature and humidity for a number of days.
To kill any bacteria that may be present in the meat, the temperature inside must be kept above 60 C for two days.
The butchering shed has a large central table where the deboning work is done. In one corner stands a meat band saw and an old-style washing machine whose wringer attachment has been converted to power a large meat grinder that sits near a large double sink.
The drying oven is large enough to handle the usable parts from an entire cow all at once.
Parish said many dog breeders make their own treats to keep their dogs happy at shows. She also confessed to having a taste for beef liver.
“When you’re showing a dog, you are using both hands, so I keep the bits of liver in my mouth. Then I can give a little bit to the dog when I want. Naturally, I wanted something that I knew where it came from.”
Once she started producing dog treats in larger quantities, she had professional-looking packaging made by a printer in Winnipeg, and began selling her product through a local veterinarian clinic. For $200, the Food Development Centre in Portage la Prairie, Man., analyzed the recipes’ nutrient contents, which are listed on the packaging.
The products are sold at vet clinics in Brandon, Dauphin, Winnipeg and Regina, as well as the local Co-op in Minnedosa. Now two years later, orders have started to grow but still are not enough to make her business into a full-time job, which is her eventual goal.
She also operates a website at www.minaltdogtreats.com, which has helped to boost sales. Marketing is the biggest struggle, she said. Getting the product into city pet stores, where urban pet owners live, is difficult amid competition from big-name companies.
“We’ve got the product, but we need to get it out there. None of us are experts in marketing and we all have jobs, so that’s where the problem lies. The people who try it, like it and use it again, but getting it into the cities where all the dog people are is hard.”
