Good one Critter, I enjoyed the read! Its been a number of years ago now but I had seen a carcass splitting done the "old timey way" on a couple of carcasses in the old Val-Ag plant in Garden where instead of using an axe to split the carcasses the old guy putting on the show (and could still swing the darn thing quick and accurately!) was using what is basically a giant long handle splitting cleaver on steriods!
Being a two handed job its wood handle was about 2' long and its blade being approx. 10" in height and about 16" long by about 1/2" thick at the back side of the blade. I dont recall exactly how many swings he took (the brisket had already been split using an old hand bone saw) but it wasnt more than 5 or 6 chops and the carcass was split, and pretty much straight down the center of the spine so the old guy was good but it sure looked like work to me! Im pretty impressed that if its for real in the story they managed to slaughter 1,000 head per day which seems pretty amazing with what they had to work with compaired to today! At National - which some of you know used to be broke down pretty much daily - when we finally got things straightened out and the place up and running like it should, we began setting production records for the place and I saw quite a few "0" downtime 3,900 head days (390/hr in a 10hr day when they ran them) which is a LOT of Angus!
I can only imagine the beef quality that they had back in the 1870's being mostly wild range cattle of longhorn decent! Lurker, do you happen to know when the Herefords then Angus (no im not including the damn bony McDonalds Holsteins!
) were brought over and raised for slaughter?