How much sausage to return for deer meat given to process in trade.

[rexlan]

I have folks wanting me to process some venison into Salami, Summer Sausage and hunter snack sticks. I have the equipment, smokes, stuffer etc and have been doing it a long time making quality product.

I generally add 40% quality pork trim or boston butt and uses fibrous and collagen casings. The casings are running about 30-50 cents a lb. now and the butts or trim about $2-2.50/lb. Seasonings run about 10 cents. and it takes about $5 of pellets and power to smoke a 10# batch. Work wise ... it is significant unless I make 25# batches which is too much or a single item.

My question is this. What is a fair return to someone who furnished just the deer meat? I provide all the labor, smoking, finishing, cutting the deer meat up, the pork and the seasonings.

Say someone provided 50# of deer meat and wanted a "share back" as summer sausage .... what is a reasonable amount to offer them back? My thinking is about 20% (10#) of the original deer meat weight is pretty generous but I may be off base on it.

Thanks for some help on it.

[reinhard1]

i guess i dont understand the "share back". when i proccesed venison i charged by the pound and made my profit on that basis. if the definition of "share" is profit i usualy made 35% profit. people will pay for quality sausage. i also used butt but for some items i used 50/50 bonless picnic trim. smoked items had a higher price tag because of the shrinkage and extra labor. good luck.

[rexlan]

I guess I didn't say it well. I don't want money and I don't do it to make money.

People like my stuff and offer me deer meat occasionally. They want me to make them sausage, etc. which I am willing to do, but they don't think about the work involved plus the cost to add the pork and stuff.

So mu question is if they give me 50# of deer meat I will end up with about 90# of finished sausages. What is a reasonable amount of the finished sausage to return to them ... no money. They provide the deer meat and I provide everything else.

If I gave them say 20# back that would have cost me about $35 in pork, trim, seasoning and casings plus the time to process it.

The finished sausage is worth about $4/lb so they are getting about $80 for their deer meat or $1.60/lb. If I needed to give more it seems to be impractical since I can buy the Boston Butt for $1.50/lb.

I think most processors charge about $4/lb for finished sausage green weight from your deer plus the cost of the pork ... expensive.

[reinhard1]

i do this all the time for the neighbors and friends. if i make it for my neighbors all i charge them is for my costs, not for my labor. they get all the sausage. i do it because i like to do it and dont ask for anything other than for the cost of the meat,casings, and seasonings.

for my family i do it all at my cost. i usualy give most of what i make away. as yourself they like the sausage items plus i enjoy making it. in a buisness setting than it would be percentage of profit.

i guess i would suggest if you want some of the sausage you made is to find a agreement with the folks you make it for. you say for example: this is how much it cost me in meat [pork trim] seasonings,casings, chips ect. . since it is their meat that they brought in which costs you nothing [except cutting it up to fit the grinder] you can say i will reduce this cost by X amount if i can keep X amount for myself. or they pay you nothing and you keep half and they get half or what's agreable to you and the folks. i've been offered part of the total plus they pay for my costs but i make sausage all year around for myself and family [and friends and neighbors] so i say thanks but i got plenty.

fortunatly i had some venison to start with for us. now i'm out of venison so i make sausage from pork and beef or just pork butt. maby make some sausage for yourself as well. dont have venison, add some beef the the pork. i have some neighbors that have deer party's and want me to make it for them. i told them that's fine, no problem, but i go back to the profit margin for that. buisness is buisness and making it for friends ect is something else. i dont mind making specialized sausage for small amounts here and there but when it comes to larger amounts then i do charge for the labor and supplies ect. good luck.

[Fishin Beast]

I would have a variable agreement before hand. For close family/friends I wouldn't ask for much but actual cost. If they appreciate it, they will hook you up.

[Surface Tension]

Your asking to put a price on venison trim/scrap. There isn't one processor that I know of that wants it. They make their money off a finished product and that goes for a minimum of $2.99 lb.

So if you bring in 60lbs of venison, 40 lbs pork added to be made as sausages you get back 100 lbs with a bill of $299.

I would put a value of not much more then $.50 a lb for venison trim on trade for finished product.

So 50 lbs venison would be worth $25 on trade, that even seems too much to me but this in trade for a friend. Question is if you give them $25 worth of finished product out of a batch of made from it which is 90 lbs, what are you doing with the remainder?

That is why processors around here don't do what your asking and I don't think they can sell it either, they only charge for processing.

As far as the price of pork butts, if your paying $2.50 a lb your paying too much.

The average guy can walk into the market at the time of deer season and get pork butts for $1.19 lb. Tell them you want a "box" or let them know to get you a box on the next delivery and that price can get lower. Now if your a butcher you'll have a supplier and get pork year round well below that $2.50 a lb.

[rexlan]

NO ... I'm paying $1.40/lb for butts but they are only 12% fat. In Florida the stores actually want $2.50/lb for pork trim which is crazy.

I am pretty good at what I do and make and I am only willing to do it for a few folks because I want the deer meat for myself. I don't hunt anymore. It is a lot of work, which I don't mind, but I can use store bough beef and make a fine product. I actually make about 10 sausage things and the value of most is closer to $4/lb. The sticks are about $6/lb.

So I guess offering 25% return of the deer meat weight in finished product is a very fair deal. Give me 40# of deer meat and I will give you 10# of finished sausage worth about $40 ... comes out to $1/lb for the deer meat.

I will have to think on it more. I guess it has to be worthwhile to the owner of the deer meat also and like you're saying if they give a processor 40# of meat they will get back about 60# and a bile for $180.

For friends and neighbors it is a different matter and I give away a considerable amount. My objective with this idea is to fill my freezer with deer meat for myself.

[reinhard1]

well if the folks you are making this for are agreeable to the formula you have that would be good all around. however here is the way just about every person that has ever brought their venison to me for proccessing wants it and i cant blame them.

they look forward to the hunt, and for a lot of people it's a one time deal. if they are fortunate enough to get a deer and bring it to me they want it all back. it's special meat from a special moment and want to enjoy it during the year. i just haven't ran into a situation such as yours and i wish you well with it. your stuff looks great. i've got to make some thuringer myself for my brother. i can almost smell the smoke. good luck.

[Surface Tension]

I get what your saying. Here in MN, if a non hunter wanted venison it wouldn't take much searching to get some donated. At least not in the Intensive Harvest areas of the state.

I can understand getting venison in Florida might not be so easy.

Just so you get an idea of what prices are here. It costs around $100 to have a whole deer processed. That would include skinning, cuts, grinding, and wrapped.

If the customer wants sausage, salami, sticks and what else that price would be by the lb of ground venison and pork before smoking.

I think your friends are lucky.

If you order your butts specifically by the box(approximately 50 lbs) then your local markets butcher will not touch them.

That means they stay in the box, aren't trimmed, and packaged individually for the display case.

Nice looking product. Is that pepperoni I see. Yumm

[rexlan]

Yes, the one with the "P" is pepperoni, the others are summer sausage and the sticks are spicy jalapeno and a BBQ flavor. I am doing a batch of Pizza Sticks at the moment.

The butt is Buckboard Bacon and it is pretty good too. I make a nice pastrami as well from the brisket.

I used to make most of my stuff from moose but want to try the deer meat and since I don't hunt anymore(old)I'm looking for a way to get some legally on a fair trade. I'm new to FL so don't have any "inns" so to speak but they raise a lot of cattle and hogs here.

I make a high quality product and use the butts so finished product ends up costing me in real dollars about $3/lb (with beef. With the deer meat I hope to get that cost down to $1.75/lb.

[reinhard1]

check out the canadian bacon threads on this forum. i have used the high mountain buckboard bacon cure on whole boneless loins and am planning to use Thirdeye's cure for the butt for the bacon. in the old day's we used to cure [brine] boneless butts and smoke them and call them cottage hams and then slice them up for cottage bacon. if you have a Sam's club or a Costco type store down there, they may have the best prices unless you can go to a meat wholesaler. right now for the case price for butts they go around 1.31 lb. they do have a fat cap on there but are fairly lean for they sell them in 2 per bag in the counter also at a higher price. boneless picnic meat is good to use for breakfast sausage and brats with a mix of venison included. good luck.