Etc... Freezer Beef Prices

[greathorse]

I am pretty sure mr Buster in his excitement miss spoke regarding live price per lb. Live weigth at 2.83 divided by .60 is approaching five bucks per lb dressed weight. I dont have a calculator and too lazy to get up. Now take your bone and fat and throw that away and divide again by about .60 and now you are approaching nine bucks per lb of edilble boneless meat. Again too lazy to do the actual math.

But pretty sure Buster is sitting on 2.83 dressed weight for that meat he is picking up. Makes more sense to me. But you never know.

Super Market beef priced per lb is about the least costly way to buy meat now days. Ground beef is a couple bucks a pound you can buy a lot of chuck and round meat for 3 to 4 bucks, less on sale and the fancy pants steaks are 6 to ten depending on if they are on sale and what cut you want. The trouble is there is some consumer trust issue with supermarket beef, hence folks paying more off the rail and from the farmer direct.


Super market beef remember is about 99 percent boneless nowdays. So when you think about the price of the beef you have on the rail you will lose 40 percent of that to bone and fat before you get to edible meat. A thousand pound animal will provide just under 400 pounds of boneless edible meat, and that includes the hamburger the roasts the brisket and all other small cuts you must make your way through.

 

[Buster52]

Well, I appreciate you giving me the benefit of the doubt, greathorse, but I'm quite positive. It is live weight.

But I'm happy with the price. This isn't supermarket CAFO finished beef we are talking about. It is worth it to me to know my meat is going to be high quality pastured organic from an animal I know lived a good life raised by a farmer who deserves to make a decent living same as me and who uses an intensive grazing system developed by one of the best grass farmers in the country.

Maybe I'll weigh it all out after I pick it up to see exactly what it weighs dressed. Out of morbid curiosity.

 

[Wildsky]

Quote:
I think its still a good deal for the quality you're getting compared to the supermarket meat.

 

[CoopCrazy]

Thanks for all your replies .. i am researching today and trying to get an idea of price around here.. I did see somewhere just north of me that was selling pasture fed beef aty 3.57 a lb.. Keep the info coming folks all input is apprecatied...

 

[Kittymomma]

I sure wish you were in my area. I have two angus x steers in the field that the buyers backed out on this fall. I've been calling them 900 and 1,000 lbs though I know they're at least 150 lbs more, but I don't have any way to weigh them so I'm conservative about the weights. Anyhow, I've been trying to sell them at $1.00 live or $2.45 hanging--hanging price includes cut/wrap, slaughter fees and I'll deliver in the area--and I still can't get rid of them.

To give you a quick idea of hanging vs live weight we butcherd an approx. 1,000 lb steer (same size as the one I'm calling 900lbs that is for sale) and got 650 lbs hanging out of him. You lose some more to trim when it's cut and wrapped and as greathorse has mentioned some of that is bone too.

If the folks that you are buying from can't get a real live weight on the animal you might see if they'll gurantee that you'll get x amount hanging for the price and if it is less that they refund part of your money. I offer the choice when I sell, even though based on what I think an animal weighs it should work out to the same total price per animal I know I'm not cheating anyone, even by accident. If your at all unsure about the animals weight see if they'll negotiate a hanging weight price for you.

 

[Katy]

Quote:
Hmmmm, that's not the way it works around here.....the singles they pull out of a group are the ones that have something wrong with them like a bad eye or something. I know when we take our cattle to the sale I'm not happy if they pull a single out of a group.....99 out of 100 times it means we'll get less for that animal.

 

[CoopCrazy]

Quote:
I wish you were closer as well.. I may do that I had thought of trying to negotiate a lil on price but want to get my research done so I have the numbers in front of me..

 

[Katy]

Quote:
I wish you were closer as well.. I may do that I had thought of trying to negotiate a lil on price but want to get my research done so I have the numbers in front of me..

I doubt that you could have negotiated on price. Around here the guys who sell their animal directly to the consumer most often can't fill the demand so they aren't going to lower their prices. We don't sell direct, but have people asking us to all the time.

 

[1stepcloser]

That is almost exactly how much I paid for my steer.

I don't care if I could have saved 25 cents a pound somewhere else. The fact the cow was raised and slaughtered humanely was worth it to me...and I got to support the local farmer instead of some god awful corporation w/out a soul. LOL

 

[Bossroo]

Quote:
The OP isn't in CA. The OP is in Indiana, just north of KY.

BTW, I lived in CA for a few years, too, and the entire state is not the dustbowl you make it out to be.

Especially where Bossroo lives. My family cattle ranched for decades in that area, back before there was such a thing as a CAFO so everything was grass fed. My great great grandfather had the first cattle brand registered in both Tulare and Fresno counties. That area is prime cattle country.

For the inquireing minds that whant to know... About half of the State of Cal. is great irrigated productive lands that produce bountiful crops, as it is the engine that produces the 7th largest economy in the world. However, for the rest of the story... Cal. has practically every terrain and environment and microclimates ( rainforest to desert to salt flats) of anywhere on earth- from the very BEST paradise to the very WORST badlands... varies from Pacific Ocean sea level beaches and it's coasted hills/ mountains, to the San Fransisco BAy, to flat as a pancake very productive irrigated crop, orchard and pasture Great Central Valley, to millions of acres of dry and rolling rangeland foothills of sparce grasses to sagebrush ( Note the annual wildfires that cover hundreds of thausands of acres), to Death Valley desert, to Sqaw Valley Olymbic sky mountains, and millions of acres of National Redwood / Pine Forests and National Parks such as Yosemite with mountains to 12,448ft., to Volcanos and hot springs, to marches to Salton Sea salt flats. Where I live is rolling (10-500 feet, then 5 miles to the East 1500-3500 ft) rocky native grassland. Just 1 mile South East of my property , one would find maybe one or two scrawny cow if one rode horseback for a day... HOT as a blast furnace , sparce vegetation, saline with surface to just below surface hardpan soils, and no water to speak of... wells go down to 1000 ft and produce maybe 4 gal. a minute if one is lucky or if one is lucky to not have SALT well water. So, basically waste land with hardly ANY ONE living there for thausands of acres. Just 4 miles to the SouthWest is the start of thausands of acres of orange, stone fruit, date, olive and nut orchards as well as Thomson's seedless grape vinyards as far as the eye can see. However , just North of our property, I have the luck to have a rancher friend with 5000 acres of fairly productive grass range land. He runs 150 cow/calf operation using Angus x Hereford cows with the terminal cross with Beefmaster bulls. At weaning in June, I get to pick out a calf to buy, then he feeds it and a few others in a corral ( his feedlot) the finest alfalfa and corn for 90- 120 days before we have them custom slauthered then hung in a cooler for over 2 weeks. FINEST and most TENDER beef available anywhere, unlike the grassfed tough as shoe leather that I get at the restaurants or the grocery stores. I also buy a Suffolk/Dorper( a hair breed that sheds it's wool every late spring) x Dorper sired terminal x-bred lamb from my neighbor across the street. Spring grass and milk fed then weaned at 4 months and pen fed alfalfa+ corn/ barley for 60 days before I slaughter it at 100 lbs. FINEST and most TENDER lamb one could savor. I raise my own Cornish X. So WE eat VERY WELL and very AFFORDABLY everyday!!!