HOMEDALE, Idaho — Kortney Bahem and her husband, Daniel Lousignont, own and operate L&L Meats LLC, a mobile butchering business in Homedale, Idaho.

Kortney grew up on a farm near Homedale and attended community college in Casper, Wyo., on a livestock judging scholarship.

“I transferred to Colorado State University to finish my bachelor’s degree, and was on their judging teams for livestock and horses. I grew up with livestock and horses; they paid for my schooling,” Kortney said.

She has two degrees, in animal science and equine science.

“I also have a meat science minor and worked in the meat science lab at CSU,” she said.

Immediately after graduation, she worked for a meat company in Colorado.

“It was an office job, however, in the big city of Denver. So I moved home. I wanted to do more hands-on, on the processing,” Kortney said. “My dad had Daniel process a beef for them prior to my moving home, and told me I should talk to the new butcher because he might need some help!

“When I moved back home, I met Daniel when he hired me to help in the butcher shop. The shop was started by Daniel’s father, and Daniel reopened it here in 2014,” said Kortney.

“I always enjoyed butchering; my family butchered a few animals for themselves, and I helped with that as I was growing up,” she said. “I also loved to cook, and it all goes hand-in-hand. They have a fantastic meat science program at CSU.

There’s a shortage of meat processors around the country, including local custom butchers, so she and her husband are busy.

“All our butchering is mobile; slaughters are done at farms, then we take everything back to our shop to process,” she said.

She and Daniel do all the kills and processing themselves and are booked a year ahead.

“One reason we are booked so far ahead is that nearly every time we go to a customer’s place they want to schedule the same number of animals for next year,” Kortney said.

Last October, however, they took a couple of weeks to go to Sitkinak Island, Alaska, to cut meat for the Alaska Meat Co.

“This will probably become an annual thing,” Kortney said.

“After the new owners acquired the business, they approached us and we had several meetings with them through the spring and summer but we were too busy,” she said.

“Then two of our customers had to cancel. They’d planned to sell meat and thought they’d have 25 head to butcher, between the two of them, scheduled for October, then told us they didn’t have those cattle,” Kortney said.

It would have been easy to fill those spots and stay busy through October, but since the Alaska group had already asked, she said it looked like an opportunity for adventure.

This remote island is off of the southern end of Kodiak Island. The meat company is the only ranch on the island, which is grazed as a huge state lease. The partners own the cows and harvest a grass-fed product from those cattle with a mobile processing unit.

“The company sells whole beef and halves, cut and processed, some ground beef and quarters. Every year they put a crew together to go out there to harvest and process the meat,” Kortney said.

She and Daniel enjoy helping young people learn about the meat business.

“Every spring, we have half a dozen 4-H groups or FFA chapters come to our shop and we do processing demos. The last few years we’ve worked with the local FFA chapter and they put on a district FFA meat judging contest in our shop. We’ve hosted and helped with that every spring,” Kortney said.

“We hosted the District FFA meat contest again in May at our shop. One of the FFA advisors who helps put it on has had cattle on feed, and he set aside 5 for this contest. They were killed a couple days ahead and cooled out and the kids came Friday for the contest. We had a class of beef carcasses and a class of pig carcasses.”

She and Daniel also raise show goats, and have about 60 Boer goats.

“We got our first goats in early 2016; we show them and raise seed-stock to sell in production sales to other goat breeders. The goats have been a lot of fun. They are a lot more hands-on and fragile than cattle, but we really enjoy them.”