If you've never worked with a custom meat processor before, the whole process can feel overwhelming. How does custom process work? How do you know your animal comes back as your meat from the processor? What happens to it in between? At Ranchers Choice Processing, we've built our entire process around one goal: giving producers a reliable and transparent processing experience from the moment you drop off your livestock to the moment you pick up your meat.
What does this look like?
Hassle-Free Drop-Off
Call us at (979) 360-0500 and schedule your drop-off appointment.
On your appointment date, load up your animals and head to:
Ranchers Choice Processing
219 E. Miller Rd.,
Bellville, Texas 77418
When you arrive, just check in with our front office and our team will direct you to the drop-off location, where experienced staff will meet you to help unload your animals.
From there, each animal is backtagged, assigning them a unique number and placed in its own pen. Your animals will never be mixed in-pen with another producer's animals. This back tag number follows your animals through every stage of the process: arrival, harvest, fabrication, freezer storage, and pickup. That means full traceability, start to finish, so you always know the meat you pick-up is the meat you brought in.
Building Your Custom Cut Sheet
Once your animals are unloaded, you’ll head back to the front office to fill out your custom cut sheet. This is where you tell us how you want your order completed and how you will specify your desired hang time, specific cuts, thickness, and packaging preferences.
New to the process or not sure what to choose? Our team is happy to walk you through your options, so your order comes back the way you want it.
Any cuts you don’t specifically select on your cut sheet go straight into your ground meat (except organs unless specified), not wasted, not sold elsewhere. You get your meat back.
Understanding Hang Time (and Why It Matters)
Hang time refers to the period your animal spends aging in a temperature-controlled cooler after harvest and before it moves into fabrication. During this time, natural enzymes in the meat break down connective tissue, which is what gives hung meat its improved tenderness and richer flavor compared to meat processed immediately.
Benefits of proper hang time:
- Improved tenderness: Enzymatic breakdown relaxes muscle fibers, making cuts easier to chew and cook evenly.
- Enhanced flavor: As moisture evaporates slowly in the cooler, the remaining flavor becomes more concentrated and developed.
- Better texture for slicing: Aged meat holds its shape better under the knife, producing cleaner, more consistent cuts.
- Customized to the animal: Hang time isn't one-size-fits-all. Leaner animals (like older or grass-fed cattle) don't have as much fat cover to protect the meat during a long hang, so they benefit from a shorter hang time to avoid excess trimming and moisture loss which can result in less of your final product.
Here's our general guidance though this may vary depending on your animal:
- Beef: 7-21 days If you're unsure, we recommend a 14-day hang time in our cooler. (This is our standard recommendation.)
- Pork: 3-5 days is typical.
- Lamb: 1-5 days works well for a smaller or lean lamb; however, this can be extended based on how much fat the animal has.
If you have any questions about this or need guidance our team can help you make this decision at drop-off.
Cooler to Freezer: Fabrication and Packaging
After your meat ages to perfection in our cooler, it moves into one of two areas:
- Our fabrication room, where our team uses your cut sheet to create your custom cuts to your specifications, or
- Our Ready-to-Eat module, where value-added meat products like sausages, hams, bacon and more are created.
Processing time varies depending on the animal, chosen hang time, and any specialty requests like smoking, curing, or sausage-making. From there, your order heads to our freezer for storage.
Pickup and Storage Timeline
Once your meat arrives in the freezer, we review your order, generate your invoice, and reach out to schedule your pickup. Keep these notes in mind:
- Orders typically take 5-7 days to reach a hard freeze.
- You’ll have 7 days after notification to pick up your order.
- Orders left longer than 7 days will incur a $5 per order, per day storage charge.
Why Our Repeat Producers Choose Ranchers Choice Processing
We've designed every step of our process around trust, traceability, and quality. The things that matter most to both us and our producers. Here's what sets us apart:
- Small town friendly service, we love our clients!
- Hassle-free drop-off with a dedicated, guided process
- Humane handling at every stage
- USDA-Inspected or Custom Processing
- Private labeling for producers selling their own meat
- Consistent cuts and products
- Co-packaging services
- Retail meat options
- Clear communication from drop-off to pickup
- Full traceability, so you know that the livestock you drop off is the meat that you will receive
- Bone guards on all bone-in cuts to help keep your packaging puncture free
- Bone-in products are packaged in thick 5-mil vacuum-seal bags to protect against rupture when handling
- Individually labeled cuts with cut name, weight, and your provided logo if required
- Labeled boxes listing exactly what's inside
- A detailed Bill of Lading (BOL) at pickup showing final weight, total weight per cut, and the location of each cut within your boxes
Ready to Process Your Animals?
Give us a call at 979-360-0500 or visit us in person at 219 E. Miller Rd., Bellville, Texas 77418, to schedule your appointment today!