How Mike Callicrate used a repurposed mobile slaughter unit to build an alternative cattle empire

For years, rancher-activist Mike Callicrate has argued that livestock farmers are in an impossible position: they can’t go big, and they can’t go small. Farmers who sell into the industrial system are paid market price for their animals at the slaughterhouse gate—but since meatpackers increasingly own their own herds, a practice called “captive supply,” some say they’re less inclined to give independent farmers a fair price (or even buy from them at all). At the same time, Callicrate doesn’t see farmers’ markets as a viable alternative, despite their popularity.

“Farmers’ markets are nice, but what farmers need are markets,” he says. “The farmers’ market doesn’t let you sell enough volume.”

Callicrate says he’s never been able to make a decent living by farming alone. As cattle ranches and feedlots closed all over the country, he scraped by thanks to the success of the Callicrate Bander—a popular livestock castration device he invented, subsequently endorsed by author and leading animal welfare consultant Temple Grandin. It’s this second revenue stream that’s given him the resources to develop a successful new model, one that involves sidestepping the conventional supply chain altogether.

The solution? Make like Big Food, and vertically integrate. In 2000, Callicrate decided to cut out the middlemen by building Ranch Foods Direct, a processing plant and store in Colorado Springs, CO. Slowly, he’s built his own supply chain, which he owns from ranch to retail. While large producers try to sell as many animals as possible at whatever price processors are willing to pay, Callicrate doesn’t play the volume game. On his farm, which is licensed to hold 12,000 cows, he runs a smaller, more diversified operation–only about 1,000 head of cattle, plus pigs and chickens. Callicrate raises his animals, slaughters and butchers them in-house, and receives a fair price for what customers buy at his grocery counter.

It’s a model he thinks small farm operators can replicate elsewhere in the country. And it’s all made possible by repurposing a much-hyped piece of equipment that, used as intended, turns out to be better in theory than in practice: the mobile slaughter unit.

From ranch to retail

Big food corporations increase their clout by purchasing their suppliers—a strategy called “backward integration.” But Callicrate has managed to forward integrate, slowly moving away from conventional channels by building his own infrastructure outside the farm. He doesn’t have to worry about what prices the big packers are offering, or how many people visit the farmers’ market. His cattle are butchered, dry-aged and sold inside the same building downtown; carcasses hang just feet from the cash registers.

Scaling up is not without its hiccups—a recent labeling- and process-related recall was an unexpected expense. Nevertheless, business is good. Each week, Ranch Foods Direct sells $45,000 worth of product out of the shop, plus another $60,000 to restaurants and institutions in the area. Callicrate says the one-man chain of custody is a big part of the appeal.

“Our customers see the carcasses hanging in the cooler,” he tells me. “They look right through the door and see them. If they want a tour they can go back any time they want and watch the guys cut the meat. People can see where their food comes from—that’s one reason our business is growing over 20 percent per year.”

Going ranch to retail has allowed Callicrate to fetch prices he’d never seen on the whole-animal market, at a scale not achievable at farmers’ markets. But he’s been fully self-sufficient for only four years. Until 2011, Callicrate didn’t have a way to slaughter his own animals. Instead, he trucked live animals 200 miles from St. Francis to G & C Packing, a Colorado Springs-based processor. He was never fully happy with the arrangement, but there weren’t other options on the table. Small, independent slaughter facilities that will process livestock into custom cuts for retail sale are rare in northwest Kansas, as is the case elsewhere in the country.

“In the overall market, we’ve lost our infrastructure,” Callicrate says. “In the Dakotas, guys are having to haul finished live cattle 600 miles when they used to have a packer in their back yard.”

If Callicrate wanted to assume full control over his own independent supply chain, insourcing slaughter would be the final step in the path toward self-reliance. But a full brick-and-mortar unit might have cost several million dollars, and that was out of the question. So he tested a radical new approach instead, creating a low-budget stationary facility out of a piece of portable equipment. 

Remember the better-in-theory mobile slaughter unit? A few years ago, abattoirs-on-wheels were supposed to be the next big thing in sustainable meat production. The plan was to equip tractor-trailers with processing equipment and send them—complete with butchering teams and USDA inspectors riding shotgun—from farm to farm around the rural countryside.

It seemed like a good idea. Farmers don’t have the processing infrastructure to meet growing demand for what the industry broadly calls “niche meats.” In certain parts of the country, people are forced to transport their livestock hundreds of miles. Those trips are costly, time-intensive, and stressful for the animals. Mobile slaughter units (MSUs) were meant to change all that.