I read this in the Capital Press......
A new USDA-inspected processing facility, designed for grass-fed sheep, goats and cattle, has been opened in the heart of Linn County sheep country. Faced with a decision whether to quit focusing on meat or to build himself a processing plant, Reed Anderson chose to build. The 15,000-square-foot facility can hold 500 lambs or 70 cattle and process up to 300 animals a day.
“To make it in the sheep business, you need to go for quality or volume and we’re known the upscale branded product,” Anderson said. “The stumbling block for us was processing. Now I control the quality from the point of conception to the finished product.”
Anderson, who is the fourth generation in a five-generation sheep operation, met with his family to make the decision to build.
“We looked at grants and co-ops and the like and decided to mortgage the farm,” Anderson said. “I wanted the building itself to look like an agriculture building and not a barn, and depending on which piece of equipment you look at depends on if it was purchased new, bought and shipped from a processing plant that closed in Chicago or was custom made for us,” he said.
The pelts are dried in an adjacent building and sent to a pelt plant in Texas.
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