While its not something I would like doing myself, what made it so difficult if I may ask?

Cows are heavy. Really heavy. And then after you've got things more or less sorted, you still need to know how to cut it in pieces, this is a lot of manual labor... It's painful slow if you dont know exactly where to cut, and you can spoil the meat if you dont know what you're doing... You need tools and you need to know how to use them... It's just a whole different world. Lets not even go on to actually killing the animal and cleaning it, or all that dance, which I have witnessed and its something else... bah! maybe in another life.