April 20 continued - After leaving the Matuschka's deer farm, we stopped at CMP Rangitikei Meat Processing Facility. It is a state-of-the art facility that processes 900,000 head annually. With approximately 370 employees working year-round, they process about 4.5 carcasses per minute. They specialize in both frozen and chilled cuts and export lamb worldwide. In the U.S., their products can be found at Trader Joe's and Wholesale Foods. It was interesting to see the process from start to finish: from unloading the sheep from trucks to slaughter to cuts to packaging.
To get a glimpse of the finishing side of sheep and beef production, we toured the Strahan finishing property. The Strahan's farm 500 hectares where they finish 13,000 lambs and 1,200 cattle. Their herds are all pasture fed and rotate around paddocks to keep fresh grass available. They also grow some peas, wheat and barley. Their property has been used as a Monitor farm (demonstration farm) for Meat and Wool in New Zealand giving producers an opportunity to observe a successful operation and learn by example.
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