Butchering 1st one

[sidney411]

So, we have a heifer, well actually cow now, had her calf and has no milk, 1 quarter is hard as a rock too, I thought it was just edema but it must be mastitis. The vet said there is a 50% chance that she will not come into milk next time even after treatment. Anyway - we've decided to butcher her. We already have all the meat sold and may take another one with her because we've got more people wanting meat then she will produce. How do I figure how much of what we will get from her? Figureing she weighs 1000 lbs ie. what % would be HB ect? Thanks!

 

[Susie David]

Figuring a normal beef animal you will loose 40% from live to hanging weight.
You can figure to loose 35% of the hanging weight in cutting...more if it is a skinny animal. The pounds of packaged meat is not counting the variety meats, (liver, tongue, tail, heart, sweetbreads, kidneys, soup bones). Out of a 1000# animal you can expect ~390# of meat packages.
We sell ours for $2.15 per pound based on the ahnging weight and the buyer pays the slaughter and cut & wrap. Works out to right at four bucks a pound.
And that's how we do it at Susie David's Cattle Co.
DMc
Here's some shameless advertizing.....

 

[redfornow]

David,
when you fed your bull calf out what ration did you use?
Getting ready to feed a bull calf out and curious how you did.

MD

 

[BlackBaldyMan]

If you look at prices, the other day looked like 1.38 choice yeild grade 2's and 3's, we are gonna sell some locker beef here pretty soon, I am going to charge $1.40 + .45 cut/wrap for corn fed USDA inspected beef.

 

[Susie David]

Kevin....you are giving it away! Check the market in your area, if this is all natural beef you are way below the market...give Nikki Eaton a call they are new to the business but are developing a market in your area.
We keep our animals on alfalfa and introduce cracked corn to finish. We advertize lean beef so we don't add 1/2 inch of back fat during the last four months.
Dmc

 

[Beefy]

Sidney, i'm curious what breed composition your cowfer is.

 

[sidney411]

pb hereford. I raised her from a calf and raised her momma from a calf also. I have her mommas 1/2 sister and this girls 3/4 sister who just calved also. This will be the 2nd cow we've had to calve with no milk. The 1st was an ex show calf so that was the explanation we got for that one. - no relation to this cow though.

Susie David - so you sell the meat strait across the board for $2.15 per lb, even for steaks?

If I have 390 lbs of meat from this cow how much of that will be HB? steaks? ect?

 

[Susie David]

We sell hanging beef for $2.15 per pound plus processing. We sell cut meat alot higher than that...$4.50 per pound for lean ground beef and steaks go up from there.
From a nice carcass you can expect 26-28 rib steaks, 26-28 T-bone, 8 porter house and two tenderloin this is a "truth teller" for the butcher. Been keeping yield records for awhile now and these counts hold true for 1" thick steaks. We have two sirloin tip roasts cut, eight sirloin steaks and usually grind the rest.
Figure if you have round and chuck cut then you will end up with around 50% ground beef.
We sell alot of lean ground beef so we have more of the lean cuts ground.
Hope this helps....Dave Mc

 

[sidney411]

Thank You! I will let you know how it turns out. The butcher told us to wait 30 days post calving to bring her in.

 

[donnaIL]

We have always sold by the live weight or hanging weight market prices, which were about $90 cwt live and $1.40 lb hanging last month, they pay for the .40 lb wrap fee at the processor, but after this year I feel like we are giving it away with the cost of feed.

Went to pick up our meat this week and a big sign out front of the processors "$213 side of beef, $253 rear quarter side". They had no "." in the sign. So I said now how do I explain this to my customers if you sell a side of beef for 213 dollars! Ofcourse they said thats $2.13 per pound...I didn't ask if it included the processing fee or not, even if it did they were getting .32 more a lb than i did, .72 a lb more if they charged for the processing.

So ask your processor what they charge..there apparently the market is there.. Next year need to make some changes.

donna