Platte County boasts local meat processing plant

Mark DeLap
Posted 1/24/22

meat processor in Platte County

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Platte County boasts local meat processing plant

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CHUGWATER – Part of the battle that beef and pork producers have been waging in Wyoming along with inflation that is out of control in America right now is the costs of shipping and processing their animals.

Mom and pop butcher shops that went by the wayside, driven out by the bigger conglomerates and government regulations and red tape are starting to pop up again on the Wyoming horizon.

Chug Springs Butchery is one of the newest shops to be licensed by the State of Wyoming to process beef and pork.

Although they are small out of the gate with the ability to process four to six animals at a time, the vision is huge for owner Alex Spring and his partner Emery Hostetler. Actually, it is a family butcher shop and the men also have their wives, Danette Spring and Rose Hostetler involved in the corporation. As the operation grows and the facility is fully staffed, Spring hopes to be able to put down between five and seven animals a day.

As far as processing time in the Chugwater butcher shop, Spring said, “We’ll hang them for two to three weeks depending on what the customer wants. From that point it will processed within a week.”

Unlike Bear Mountain Beef in Hawk Springs, Wyoming, which is in Goshen County that is USDA inspected, Chug Springs Butchery is only state licensed for custom at this time, but future plans include becoming USDA certified.

According to Spring, it will take a minimum of six months to be up and running for a USDA certification.

“Once you’ve gone through the state, you’ve pretty much gone through the USDA,” Spring said. “Basically, everything here is USDA approved, as far as how we’re set up and every hoop we had to jump through with the state. The state has to follow as least as much as the USDA. With USDA we’ll have to have somebody on site, so we are going to be building an apartment for an inspector. It’s just a lot more paperwork.”

The USDA, according to Spring requires more of a paper trail. Also, the butchering is not being done for the meat to be sold commercially. This will eventually change, according to Spring.

“Our plan is to open this up as a USDA facility,” Spring said. “At that point we will build another facility. We are going to get everything up and running smoothly first and get some help. I don’t want to open up USDA and not have help. I think we can do this in six months.”

Building facilities and fulfilling the guidelines are going to be the easy part for most startups in Wyoming. The challenge that most all manufacturers and businesses are facing, are hiring the labor to be able to keep a place running efficiently and proficiently.

Spring has not only thought about that challenge, but is already coming up with some industry strategy.

“There is nothing in stone yet, but we are probably going to have to provide housing so you can get people here,” Spring said. “We are going to need somebody for bookwork, packaging, processing and at this point, the customer is going to deliver and pick up.”

Chug Springs opened their doors for the first time Sept. 15, 2001, and they initially set themselves up as a wild game processor.

“Since we opened, we’ve done over 450 animals,” Spring said. “Deer, elk and antelope have been the animals main animals that were brought to us. We also did a couple of Big Horn Sheep and four moose along with some buffalo. The biggest animal we processed was a moose that weighed in at 601 pounds. We were hammered just from Facebook traffic. We were doing 18-hour days.”

Spring is learning as he goes. He’s always been an avid hunter and has from an early age learned how to process what he’s killed. It’s been a life-long learning process.

“I’ve got a friend that butchered all of his life and he had a small shop in Cheyenne,” Spring said. “He shut down and was just burned out. He inspired me and encouraged me to build one. I told him that I had the land and location, let’s go build it.”

The company wants to continue to process both domestic animals and wild game, and doing that, there are certain restrictions that have to be met.

“We can hang it all in the same cooler, but it has to be on separate rails,” Spring said. “We have to wash up in between the processing of domestic and the processing of wild game. But if we do let’s say, beef in the morning, we can straight to wild game without washing up. Domestic comes in clean and that’s the reason.”

Spring’s partner, Hostetler who has been with him since the inception of the operation quit his full-time job to sign on with his friend and now partner. The Hostetlers had moved to eastern Wyoming from Ohio and the two men met each other for the first time at Abundant Life Church in Cheyenne.

“Alex and I knew each other,” Hostetler said. “I’m hoping to be a really good worker for him. I quit my regular job to come and work here. I really enjoy it, but it’s a lot of work if you do it correctly. That way you don’t have to backtrack and redo what we’ve already done.”

When the rumors started flying about a new meat processing plant in Platt County, Hostetler said the phones began ringing of the hook.

“We have heard a lot of positive feedback for having a butcher shop here,” Hostetler said. “because of those frustrations of not being able to process locally. We are looking forward to serving and moving in that capacity where we can make their life better by getting their meat processed without having to go out of state. We not only want people to know where their food is being processed, but we want them to also get to know us and we want to get to know them.”

As the Springs and the Hostetlers grow into their vision, the plan is to begin enlarging the exterior layout of the venue including expanding the space for holding pens, creating possible housing for employees and even an apartment for a USDA inspector.

As of right now, the team of the two couples are handling the yeoman’s work for the entire business. That includes stocking spices, ordering, processing, transporting the carcasses to either the Cheyenne or Torrington landfills, packaging, accounting, scheduling and monitoring the Facebook page.

Some local butchers in Wyoming are so booked up that there are waiting lists of up to 18 months according to Akaushi beef producer Brook Brockman. She also said that with the cost of fuel on the rise, local producers are cheering for and pulling for local shops to be up and running in Wyoming.

“I’ve got people calling me already,” Spring said with a laugh. “They tell me that I have them on the schedule, and I don’t even have a schedule yet.

As far as pricing goes, Chug Springs charges according to hanging weight.

“It’s a dollar a pound hanging weight,” Spring said. “We haven’t completely settled on our kill fee yet, but it will probably be around a hundred bucks. That is mainly for killing, skinning and disposal.”

The site itself is located off the I-25 corridor just south of Chugwater within site of Dan Kirkbride’s cowboy on the bluff silhouette. The facility has parking, outdoor holding pens and room to expand. On the inside, there is a kill and skinning room. They will then split the animal with a splitter saw in that same area before putting the carcass on a rail and sending it to the pre-chill room where it will stay for 12 hours. From there it goes to the hanging cooler to age.

From the cooler, Chug Springs follows the customer request sheet for how the meat is to be processed and their processing room handles the cutting and grinding and packaging.

Spring was born in Georgia and grew up in North Carolina near the Outer Banks. He has been residing in Wyoming for over five years. He first learned about southeast Wyoming when he helped his brother-in-law move to Wheatland.

“I loved if from the first time I was here,” Spring said. “We had some problems we were going through in North Carolina and had a son with cancer.”

Here in Wyoming at 10 years old now, the Spring’s son, “Wade” has been given a clean bill of health. The Springs have five children who all go to school at Valor institute in Cheyenne.

For more information you can visit Chug Springs Butchery at their Facebook page or call them at (307) 365-4338.