Where can I send a cowhide to be tanned?

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Next year I will be butchering one of my long haired steers (Scottish Highland). I want to preserve the hide with the hair. I have been told that many tanneries will cut a hide to tan it, because they do not have large enough equipment to do an entire hide in one piece.

Does anyone know of a tannery that can do an entire hide in one piece and will also do 1-3 hides only per order?

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), September 27, 2001

Answers

There should be a taxidermist in your locality. They commonly have whole animal hides tanned with the fur. They may give you a name or as an alternate there are many firms dealing with taxidermy on the WEB.

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), September 27, 2001.

there is a place in P.A who will do whole cow hides I need to look it up,if you get time call the county of Lancaster PA chamber of commerce and they may know. I will call around too. What part of the country are you in? You may ask at the local butcher who they use.

-- renee oneill{md.} (oneillsr@home.com), September 27, 2001.

Renee is referring to Bucks Co. Fur, 220 1/2 Ambler St. Rear, Quakertown, PA 18951, 215-536-6614. I've sent them goat, sheep and deer hides and they've done a good job for me. My only complaint is that they puncture the hides in a series of holes in the withers area and my guess it's to move the hide through the various solutions in the tanning process.

I haven't sent them anything in about 5 years so can't speak to their current pricing. Shipping of even a dried hide will be expensive. You will have to scrape the hide and salt and dry it. They accept no hides in the month of July. It sounds like a really neat thing to do with your hides though!

-- marilyn (rainbow@ktis.net), September 27, 2001.


Yep thats the place! I forgot about the holes,the dad and son split and the son opened his own shop,around the same area, maybe call him?

-- renee oneill{md.} (oneillsr@home.com), September 27, 2001.

A place a friend used about ten years ago was Sebring Custom Tanning, 429 Webster Turn Drive, Sebring, FL 33870. As I recall they put it into a box while flexible and then froze it. They shipped on Monday morning so it wouldn't sit in a warehouse over the weekend.

They had a Hereford hide done as a wall hanging. I later sold it over eBay for, I think, $90. The guy who bought it was an African living in NYC who wanted things like that to remind him of home.

Try searching the Internet on tanning.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), September 27, 2001.



Countryside had a great series of tanning and tawwing hides and pelts on the homestead in the Nov/Dec 1999 issue (Vol 83 No6). As of the last issue CS still lists it as an available back issue on page 11.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 27, 2001.

And be sure to have evidence of the type of hide you gave the people who sent it out for tanning . . . one company tried to gyp my wife out of a calf hide she had done; after three months, they called her to pick up the hide. Well, the calf skin had "mutated" to a whitetail deer hide, somewhat of a miracle, no? She had previously taken a photograph of the green hide and the employee had no choice but to admit that the skin was calf, not deer, because of the picture. The nitwit. . . .

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), September 28, 2001.

Thank you everyone for your answers.

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), September 29, 2001.

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