Buying Beef From a Farmer? The Real Cost Explained Here
This is a little bit of a rehash of one of my previous blogs, but I'm seeing folks advertising quarters and half beef sides for sale and they're not explaining things or their pricing clearly. Here's what you need to know!
First: Terminology. Live weight is how much the animal weighs when it's out in the pasture. Hanging weight is how much the animal weighs "on the hook", or after it's been slaughtered, skinned, the guts removed, the head removed and front and rear fetlocks removed. In short, hanging weight is mostly meat, but still includes a whole lot of bones you can't do much with. "Cut and wrapped" weight is how many pounds of actual meat you end up with in your freezer.
Most farmers or wholesale stores sell their animals based on hanging weight which may or may not include slaughter and butchering fees (ask before you commit!). It makes sense to use hanging weight because that's how the butchers also charge the farmers: they charge the butchering fees based on hanging weight or "on the hook". In the Flathead Valley, I've seen butchering fees from $0.65/lb up to $0.75/lb hanging weight. Also, the butchers charge a "kill charge" which is the fee to slaughter, gut, and skin the animal to get it down to hanging weight. I've seen this anywhere from $65 up to $85 in the Flathead Valley. UPDATE on 5/2020: every inspected shop in the valley is now $125 for slaughtering.
All these different weights can only be estimated until the animal is in the form described. For example, if the animal is still alive, you can only estimate hanging weight. Once the animal has been slaughtered you know it's hanging weight, but you can only estimate your cut and wrapped weight. But once the animal is cut and wrapped, you know how much meat you're getting and how much you paid for it. For a high quality steer under two years old and on good feed, you can estimate your weights based on ratios.
For example, a 1200 lb live weight steer will have a hanging weight about 60-65% of it's live weight or around 780lb hanging weight. Or, you could say that the ratio of hanging weight to live weight is about 60-65%. Of that 780lb hanging weight, you should also get about 60-68% of that in meat or 507lb of meat, cut and wrapped. In other words, your ratio of cut and wrapped meat to hanging weight is about 60-68%.
If you buy a whole steer from a farmer based on hanging weight, you can estimate how much you're paying per pound of meat in your freezer using these ratios. Say your steer is 800 lb on the hook, or hanging weight. The farmer is charging $4.40/lb hanging weight and the farmer is paying for all the butchering fees and slaughter. To estimate your cost per pound of meat in the freezer, you simply divide your cost per pound of hanging weight, by the ratio of cut and wrapped weight to hanging weight. In this example, it's $4.40/0.65 or $6.77 per pound of meat in your freezer.
So even though you're only paying $4.40/lb hanging weight, when it gets into cut and wrapped form, your actual cost is closer to $6.80/lb. Make sense?
Here's another example: a farmer is charging $3.60/lb hanging weight, but is not covering the butchering or slaughter fees. The butcher he used charges $0.75/lb hanging weight for cutting and wrapping and $85 for the slaughter. Let's use our 800lb hanging weight steer mentioned above to calculate our cost per pound of meat.
We take the farmer's price plus the butchering cost or $3.60 + $0.75 which is $4.35/lb hanging weight. Then, we divide that by our estimated ratio of cut and wrapped weight to hanging weight or $4.35/0.65. This gives us $6.69/lb cut and wrapped. BUT! Someone has to pay for slaughter and if the farmer doesn't, the customer does. So, we have approximately 520 lb of meat from our 800 lb hanging weight steer, and $85/520 is $0.16 per pound of meat for slaughter. So our total cost per pound of meat in the freezer is now $6.85.
Make sense? Helpful? What do you think?
Be Blessed. -Kenny
P.S. Many of you have thanked me for writing this blog, so I decided to add a little more “meat” to the bones and write a short, affordable ebook on the topic. If this blog helped you, I would appreciate a like and a share, or better yet, go buy my book and send me a few dollars! You can find the book here: Buying Beef from a Farmer
Alternatively, here’s a donate button. Thanks so much for reading! Tell your friends!
A beautiful day on the farm at KD Farms in the Flathead Valley