Is It Legal To Sell Live Animals At A Farmers Market In Michigan

sell meat from your farm

If y'all enhance cattle, pigs, sheep, and other 4-legged animals, how tin can you sell meat? Y'all accept 2 bones options. You can accept your meat processed and then sell individual cuts, either wholesale or retail, which means you are selling meat. Or you tin sell the whole animate being to one person (or ii) and deliver that beast to the locker for processing. In that situation, you are technically selling an animal, rather than meat.

Selling private cuts

If yous sell individual cuts, yous have to take a license in most places. You will also accept to have freezer space for belongings all of that meat, and it shouldn't be your own personal freezer. A commercial freezer that has a temperature read-out on the exterior is best, which is pricey, but at a minimum, you lot demand a thermometer in it, and you should keep a temperature log that shows that the meat is always below zip degrees Fahrenheit. Even if no one is checking this, it'southward for your own protection in instance anyone ever gets sick.

It'southward a skillful idea to take an on-farm store so that you can have regular hours and won't take customers walking through your house. Ane of the biggest disadvantages of selling private cuts is that you take to find a lot of customers, and most will only buy a few cuts and come back regularly every bit they do in the supermarket.

Selling the whole fauna

Minervas-ram If you sell the whole beast and deliver it to the locker for processing, you merely need to notice one client for each animal. Sometimes two people will dissever a beef. While it's true that non that many people want to buy a whole animal, yous don't need to find that many customers. If you only have ii or three extra lambs, for instance, you only need to discover ii or three customers, rather than a dozen or more, if you were selling individual cuts of meat.

The customer pays you for the animate being, and they pay the locker for the processing. They can have the animate being cut up, footing up, cut into stew meat, made into sausage, or whatever else they want. They but pay for exactly what they desire. For example, if they don't want any hamburger patties or sausage, so they wouldn't take to pay for that service. If they don't like shoulder roasts, they can have that role of the creature fabricated into basis or stew meat.

The lesser line

JamesJulia You can brand more money per creature if you sell meat by the cut. For example, lamb chops can sell for $xv to $xx per pound, whereas a whole lamb sells for $six to $10 per pound hanging weight. Keep in mind that some of the "hanging weight" will wind up in the garbage, such every bit bones, unless you inquire for them, so not every pound of hanging weight is edible. You also accept more expenses with your on-farm store, freezers, and electricity. If you only have a few animals to sell each yr, ultimately you would make more money if you sell them every bit whole animals. I one time heard someone at a conference say that you should not be selling individual cuts unless you had at least 100 animals per twelvemonth to sell. I think that'southward high, merely I wouldn't even think well-nigh an on-subcontract store until I was processing at least 10 head of cattle or twenty smaller animals, such every bit pigs or sheep, annually. Your expenses will vary based upon whether or not you already take a edifice that can be used every bit a farm store or how you desire to build it. Ultimately you demand to exercise the math to figure out which one volition be more profitable in your situation.

Because rules can vary from state to state (and plainly land to state), y'all should check with your state Department of Agriculture and Department of Health to meet what the specific rules are in your area.

The rules and options for selling poultry are entirely different, and I'll talk nigh that next week.