The Balclutha 24-year-old said she was "excited" to receive formal certification as a professional butcher last month, following a four-year apprenticeship and a lifetime spent around the industry.
Miss Botting’s great-great-grandfather, Alfred Botting, first founded a Balclutha butchery on the site of the current Woolworths supermarket in 1932, and successive sons have maintained the family business locally until her recent arrival on the scene.
She now works with father Craig Botting at the Clyde St family outlet, which provides fresh retail cuts, its own smallgoods and home kill services.
Miss Botting said she had not originally envisioned following in the family footsteps, not least due to an early aversion to handling meat.
"I was always the kid who wouldn’t touch meat. I just didn’t like it.
"I studied tourism and did my travelling, but Covid cut that short. Then I went to work at Finegand [freezer works], and that taught me how to handle meat.
"I needed a good career and had helped out at the butcher’s after school when I was needed, so it just made sense."
Mr Botting said he and the family were "proud" his daughter had stepped up to maintain a 90-year-plus family tradition.
"The business has come down through Alfred to Len, my dad Keith, myself, and now Hannah.
"I think quality of product combined with traditional, personal service is what’s kept us going strong from generation to generation, and it’s great to now have Hannah on side to keep that tradition going."
Miss Botting said she enjoyed all aspects of the trade, from preparing meat to dealing with customers.
"I don’t think there are any other qualified female butchers in the district, so it’s a bit different. It’s a good job, and more women should think about it."
Butcher shops were sociable places, where you could drop in for a yarn while you picked up dinner, she said.
Her own earliest memory of the family business echoed this.
"If I was walking past the shop after school, my grandad would always call me in for a chat."
