We were discussing the many uses of cows at a party on Saturday night and I wondered what is done with the udders on beef cows. So what is done with them?
I imagine many of them get eaten, same as most of the rest of the cow. It’s not hard to find cow udder recipies online or in older cookbooks. I haven’t seen udder in any butcher shops, but it could probably be ordered on request.
However, since udders are very fatty, most of them probably get separated for rendering with the rest of the fat.
The udder is mostly fat (it is a type of breast after all) so it isn’t useful for much after the cow is slaughtered. Like other waste parts of the cow, it is typically just cut off and sent to be rendered at a rendering plant where the waste parts of the cow are broken down into bulk components that may be used as ingredients in other products.
Strictly speaking, the cattle grown for beef are steers, or castrated bulls. Female cattle, “cows” are used for the for production of more cattle and aren’t specifically raised for their meat.
When they are no longer useful as producers, they’re slaughtered the udders become “beef byproducts.”
Here’s an article about eating udders, including photos of them being prepared in a kitchen. It includes a link to USDA regulations which state that “lactating mammary glands of cattle… shall not be saved for edible purposes”, but that “nonlactating cow udders may be saved for food purposes”.
(Sh)udders.
Speaking as a former slaughterhouse employee, Ornery Bob is correct. In the specific facility I worked at, at least 99 out of every hundred head that went down the line were steers. We did have an old milk show up once in a while though. Udders were just trimmed off and dropped onto the belt for the dog food line.
Another use, although probably very rare, would that they used by researchers studying lactation who want the tissue. I knew a guy who would go to slaughterhouses to get pituitary glands for research purposes.
If this were true, the world would be literally buried in cows by this.
Think about it. A heifer will “normally” produce a calf every 1.25 years for 8 years. So over a lifetime a cow will produce 3.2 bull-calves and 3.2 heifers.
If every cow was kept as a breeder, as you suggest, then the cow population of the planet would double every 2.5 years, with an exponential increase. If this had been common practice for just the past 50 years, and if the total global herd was just 1 million cows in 1963, we would now have >30 trillion cattle on the planet, and the weight of cows will be due to surpass the weight of the Earth itself by the end of this century.
Obviously this is not occurring. 
Cows are commonly sold for meat. In fact they make up about 45% of the animals sold for meat. They don’t make up 50% because breeders live longer and so have a natural attrition rate. But it’s around 50% of the throughput of abattoirs because around 50% of cattle born are females.
Any given animal production operation decides what the sustainable number of cows is, and any animals over that number are sold. Some of those cows will be bought by other producers as breeders, but the vast majority go straight to slaughter.
The idea that cows and heifers aren’t slaughtered at around the same rate as bulls/steers makes no sense.
When they are no longer useful as producers, it is because, by definition, they are dry. Dry cows don’t have udders that are large enough to be worth separating.
That would have been because you were working on a line producing prime beef. Steers comprise the majority of animals in feedlots, and hence most prime beef is from steers. But that just means that another line, either in the same abattoir or at another abattoir, is processing 99% cows.
You can see the national figures for Australia here. 4, 100, 000 steers/bulls slaughtered. 3, 200, 000 cows/heifers. Figures in the US can be seen here. Per month it’s roughly 1400 steers/bulls and 1350 cows/heifers. The closer ratio reflects the more intensive nature of US farming and concomitant lower loss of breeders.
Figures for anywhere in the world have about the same ratios because cattle produce equal sex ratios of calves. Just as many females have to be slaughtered as males, or else the females are being left tot rot in the paddock.
Several times we’ve been over the use of dried out old dairy cows in commercial hamburger like that used by McDonalds. Cecil’s column on the topic even included a quote from a McDonalds spokeperson saying as much - phrased as the mix of beef in their hamburger including “leaner, more flavorful cuts from dairy cattle” or something like that, rather than “dried out old dairy cows” of course.
Baloney and hot dogs
This was a great post, Blake, but I just wanted to point out that farmed cattle do not necessarily produce equal ratios of offspring. I interviewed at a bull semen business that separated “boy” sperm from “girl” sperm and would sell you whichever you desire. Science!
I figured that might the case, as with everything else a person in the West wouldn’t put on their dinner plate.
I often see udders for sale in the meat departments of Asian grocery stores in my area.
I would have guessed jester hats.
What job title? … and did you get the job?
According to my father, in The Old Country before The War, it was for a friend of his to buy, slip down his pants, fill with water, partially taken out through the zipper at a public urinal where others were peeing, be looked down at and cursed for not peeing properly, or something, and be slashed off in anger with a razor blade.
And also to be eaten, like lungs, often enough when you’re poor.
originally they were used for purses. coin organizer was a big selling feature.
I think it was something generic like “Lab Technician”, I was offered the job, but luckily something better came along! (no pun intended).
Don’t forget milk!