The Orkney Tiny Trailer Abattoir is about to make a big difference

Helen Babbs meets a determined smallholder developing a moveable solution to her local abattoir problem

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With the closure of many small local abattoirs, most smallholders raising livestock for meat are familiar with the long drive to take their stock for slaughter. But for Jane Cooper on Orkney, this was a seven hour journey! “We’d start loading at 4:30am, in time for an hour and half ferry ride across to mainland Scotland, and then five hours driving down the notorious A9 with a livestock trailer,” she describes with a shudder.

As founders of the Orkney Boreray Cooperative, Jane and her husband Paul weren’t just taking a few sheep either. “There are now eight flocks of Boreray sheep across the islands, and all the ones for meat come to us for taking to the abattoir in a batch,” she explains. “As the numbers of sheep and the demand for their rare meat increases, this meant we had two of these nightmare trips last year, and it was going to have to rise to three this year.”

TIME FOR A CHANGE!

But this is all now due to change with the arrival of the ‘Tiny Trailer Abattoir’ in spring 2026. “This consists of two trailers, about 5m long, fitted out as a slaughter unit and chiller unit respectively,” Jane describes. “The trailers dock together back-to-back when in operation, and the hanging rail for the carcasses runs straight through. The abattoir will be set up on our farm hard-standing area, and then connected up to our existing electricity and mains water supply.”