The following information was given to IYAK by member Lynn Wilkinson.
Lynn had a small 2½ year old bull processed for its meat by G&C Packing Co. in Colorado Springs. G&C agreed to salt the hide and give it to Lynn at no extra charge. The salted, fresh hide weighed well over 100 lbs. He had them place it in a clean trash container equipped with small wheels. The container facilitated taking the hide to the pickup and prevented the liquid coming from the hide dripping on the ground, etc.
Several large cardboard boxes were flattened out and placed in a couple of layers on his garage floor. The hide was spread out (about 6’x 6’) on the boxes with the hair side down in order to be able to continue to salt the hide. G&C had used large granular salt like rock salt. The tanners had advised using stock salt available from local feed stores. The cardboard absorbed some of the liquid that drained from the hide and the rest was mopped up from the cardboard with paper towels and then disposed of in plastic sacks. After 5 days, the liquid had all but stopped draining from the hide and it was ready to ship to the tanner.
G&C recommended 3 tanners but 2 of them would not handle yak hides with the hair on and the third one (the Tannery in Lander, Wyo.) wanted $20/sq. ft. to tan the hide less $5/sq. ft. if the tangles were combed out of the hair before shipping it. A local taxidermist said that this was consistent with his experience of having bison hides tanned for $15/sq. ft.
When Lynn was in Alaska last summer, he asked several places who tanned their large animal hides where they had hides processed. He repeatedly heard the name New Methods of South San Francisco, CA. He called them and they said it would be $7.50/sq. ft. with the hair on, the tail lift intact and no head to deal with. They didn’t say anything about combing the tangles out of the hide before shipping it. Lynn folded the hide, placed it in a cardboard box and shipped it to them via UPSGround at a cost of $27.84. The box weighed 63.5 lbs.
The tanning took 5 ½ months to process and the charges were 5’ x 6’ x $7.50/sq. ft. =$225 plus $14.30 shipping UPS Ground for a total of $239.30.
According to Lynn, the hair is beautiful. The animal was slaughtered in January and thus his coat was long and thick. The hide, on the other hand, is not as supple as hoped for. It is not stiff, but it is not as thin and supple as Carol Wilkinson would like in order to be able to use small portions of it in clothing that she plans to weave and sew. It may be able to be scraped and something topical applied to make it more supple.
The outfit is: New Method Fur Dressing Co., 131 Beacon St., South San Francisco, CA 94080 650-583-9881 kvogl@pacbell.net |
