A counter with no beef in the week of a bank holiday
You sell your own beef, lamb and pork. The abattoir needs bookings well in advance, especially in autumn and before Christmas. The beef needs time hanging before it is cut. So a decision made in early spring decides what is on the butchery counter in May.
Usually the booking is made by habit: a bullock every few weeks, lambs in batches from late summer, pigs when they reach weight. Then a sunny bank holiday brings a rush for steaks just as the last side of beef is cut, and the next one is still hanging. A few weeks later, two batches of lambs come back close together and the freezer fills with shoulders nobody asked for.
Why kill dates and demand drift apart
The people deciding which animals to send are usually on the farm side, looking at weights, condition and grass. The people who know what the counter will need are in the shop. The abattoir's diary, the hanging room's capacity and the butcher's cutting days sit between them. Nothing puts all of that on one page.
- Abattoir slots are booked weeks ahead, by habit or by phone.
- Hanging time means meat reaches the counter long after the kill date.
- The hanging room and chiller have limited space.
- Christmas pre-orders, meat boxes and trade customers all draw on the same animals.
- Animals ready on the farm are tracked separately from shop demand.
Decisions about animal welfare, readiness and transport are for you, your vet and the abattoir. We do not advise on them. What we build is the planning view that connects those decisions to the shop.
What a mismatched kill plan costs
When the counter runs out of your own beef, customers who came for it go elsewhere, or you buy in meat that does not carry your farm's story. When too much comes back at once, the hanging room is overloaded, the butcher is rushed, and slow cuts pile up in the freezer. Animals kept on longer than planned eat feed and grass. Missed abattoir slots in busy seasons are hard to replace.
The strain also falls on relationships inside the business: the farm feels the shop is always changing its mind, and the shop feels the farm never tells it what is coming.
The kill plan we build
- A list of animals expected to be ready over the coming months, kept by the farm side: species, tag or group, expected ready date and weight, updated from your own records or a shared sheet.
- Abattoir bookings recorded with dates, numbers and any notes, with a reminder when the next booking needs to be made to keep supply steady.
- Hanging and cutting times per species, and your hanging room and chiller capacity, so the plan shows when each animal's meat will reach the counter and whether space will be tight.
- Expected demand from the shop: counter sales by week from your till, meat box orders, trade standing orders and Christmas pre-orders, with seasonal patterns from past years.
- A week-by-week view of meat expected against meat needed for each species, highlighting gaps and gluts well before they happen.
- Suggested booking changes, such as bringing one bullock forward or splitting a batch of lambs, for the farm and shop to agree together.
| Question | Where the plan answers it |
|---|---|
| Will we have beef for the bank holiday? | Expected meat by week against expected sales |
| Can the hanging room take two sides that week? | Capacity against bookings |
| Do we have enough lamb for boxes in September? | Box orders against expected carcasses |
| When must we book Christmas slots? | Reminder based on the abattoir's lead time |
| Which animals are ready but not booked? | Farm list against bookings |
Planning meat afterwards
Once a month, the farm manager and shop manager look at one screen together. The plan shows a gap in beef in late May and a glut of lamb in September. They agree to bring a bullock forward and to spread the lambs over three kills instead of two. The bookings are made and recorded. The butcher sees what is coming and when.
In the autumn, the Christmas pre-order numbers feed straight into the plan, so the abattoir slots for turkeys, beef and gammon are booked from real orders rather than last year's guess.
Over a year, the records show how well supply met demand for each species, which feeds into breeding and stocking decisions on the farm side.
Does meat planning feel like this?
- The counter runs out of your own beef or lamb at busy times.
- Two batches of animals come back close together and swamp the hanging room.
- Abattoir slots are booked by habit rather than from expected demand.
- The farm and shop disagree about what is needed and when.
- Christmas slots are booked before pre-orders are known.