CUSTOM PROCESSING

3. Hand-Selected Butcher’s Cuts

Every bundle is built by expert butchers who carefully choose a balanced variety of steaks, roasts, ribs, and ground beef. These aren’t scraps or factory trimmings—they’re real, high-quality cuts you'd expect from a local butcher shop.

4. Flash-Frozen & Vacuum Sealed

Once cut, each piece is vacuum-sealed and flash-frozen to lock in peak flavor and texture. Whether you cook it next week or next month, you’ll enjoy the same juicy tenderness and rich beefy taste every time.

5. Truly Farm-to-Freezer

There’s no middleman here. We work directly with farms and do all our own processing. From pasture to packaging, our beef stays in trusted hands—so you know exactly where your food comes from.

Beef
Processing 

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Pork
Processing 

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Deer
Processing 

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Pork Processing

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Deer Processing 

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Beef Processing 

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What Is Custom Meat Processing?

Custom meat processing converts live animals — beef cattle, hogs, and deer — into finished meat products cut to your specs. Unlike the large meat processing plants and factories that dominate the meat industry, our custom processing operation works directly with individual producers and families. You decide how the carcass gets broken down. Steaks at your preferred thickness. Ground beef in your lean ratio. Roasts, brisket, jerky, snack sticks — your call. Real meat processing, with butcher craft that high-volume meat industry plants cannot replicate.

What We Process

Our butcher operations handle every animal we take in — beef, pork, and deer — for local farmers, livestock producers, and hunters across Iowa. Every meat processing job runs through the same butcher staff in the same USDA-inspected facility, with the same standards from intake to packaging.

Beef Processing 

Custom beef processing for whole, half, and quarter beef orders. Hang and chill, steak portioning to your specs, ground beef in your lean ratio, roasts, brisket, and specialty cuts. Every pound of meat goes through packaging and freezer storage.

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Pork Processing 

Whole and half hogs processed to your specifications. Chops, pork steaks, roasts, ground pork, bacon, and ham. Pork processing also includes specialty sausage and bratwurst made with our own seasonings.

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Deer Processing 

Wild game meat processing for Iowa hunters. Steaks, roasts, ground venison, and specialty products like deer jerky and summer sausage. Same butcher care, same standards.

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Common Questions About Custom Meat Processing

Meat processing converts live animals into finished meat products through six core steps: humane slaughter, carcass chilling, cutting and trimming into primal cuts, grinding for ground products, curing or marination for specialty items, and finally packaging and cold storage. Each step has food safety standards that USDA-inspected meat processing operations must meet.
Meat industry experts group meat processing into four categories. Primary processing — slaughter, bleeding, chilling. Secondary processing — breaking carcasses into usable butcher cuts. Value-added processing — curing, smoking, and turning meat into bacon, jerky, and hot dogs. Finally packaging and preservation — vacuum sealed methods that extend shelf life.
The big 4 meat processors in the US are Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Cargill, and National Beef. Together these factories control roughly 85 percent of US beef processing and a similar share of pork and poultry. They run massive industrial plants optimized for speed. Milo Locker is the opposite end of the meat industry — a small USDA-inspected butcher shop serving local Iowa producers directly.
Most nutritionists point to highly processed industrial meats — mass-produced deli meats and ultra-processed sausages — as the least healthy options, because of added preservatives, sodium, and fillers. Whole cuts from a trusted butcher are very different from those industrial products. The quality of your meat starts with how the animal is raised and how it's processed.
This is a general question and individual dietary advice should come from a doctor or registered dietitian. Most guidance suggests minimizing highly processed industrial meats and prioritizing whole cuts. Single-source meat from a trusted local butcher is fundamentally different from factory-made products.
Depends on the species. Beef typically requires 14 to 21 days, including time in chilled storage for proper aging. Pork takes 7 to 10 days. Deer processing during busy season takes 2 to 4 weeks.
No. We process for anyone with an animal — livestock producers, hobby farmers raising their own freezer beef, deer hunters, and families who buy live animals for custom processing.
Yes. Before we cut, our butcher team walks through a cut sheet with you — steak thickness, roast sizes, ground portions, and packaging quantities. This is your animal, and you decide how it gets broken down.