calfbuyer
Well-known member
A few months ago we were out of beef and I was thinking of not selling one of my heaviest calves and feeding him out and butchering him. Then I got to thinking about how long he would have to be on feed and how much the feed would cost and the 750 to 800 dollars that i was going to have to forfit by not selling him. I was reading a thread on here about freezer beef and Sale Barn Junkie brought up a point that I couldnt believe I hadn't thought of.....Buy a big fat open heifer or a heavy steer at the sale barn and feed em for a month to 6 weeks and youre done....brilliant, why hadnt i though of that. So, I told my "order buyer" (my neighbor who works the ring at the sale barn and buys calves for my nurse cows or whatever else im looking for) to try to find me a big 9 weight steer (hard to find) or a big fat open heifer (much easier to find). It took him a couple of weeks and he called me after the sale one thursday and said he had one. He ended up buying me a 865 lb., fat, open, Herford heifer, she looked like a picture from a county fair back in the 60's with the short, fat little herefords, PERFECT! I really could have taken her to the butcher the next day but I wanted to guarantee myself good marbling and make sure that if she had been shot with anything recently that it would be clear of her system by butcher time so I fed her for 45 days with a cheap low protien filler ration that the local sale barn uses and I added a coffe cup of Golden Flow (Golden Flow is a 90% fat liquid that is used to put finish on show steers) morning and evening to about half of a 5 gallon bucket of feed. I just picked up the beef yesterday and it is excellent. Highly marbled, looks good and tastes even better. The total investment was 865 (dollar a pound purchase price) about 150$ worth of feed and 441 processing for 542 lbs of meat at .70 per lb =1456/2 (we split it with another family) =728 dollars.
I said all that to ask this...how many of you sell freezer beef? how do you do it and what are your cost, concerns, who are your customers and what do they want. I figured it all up it comes out to 2.68 per pound. He77, hamburger meat at the store is 4.50 per lb. Why wouldn't people jump all over this? Is it just that they don't want to make that large of a purchase or is it that they dont have storage for that much beef at one time or do they just now know that they could do something like that? Comments please, im thinking of sellin me some freezer beef!!
I said all that to ask this...how many of you sell freezer beef? how do you do it and what are your cost, concerns, who are your customers and what do they want. I figured it all up it comes out to 2.68 per pound. He77, hamburger meat at the store is 4.50 per lb. Why wouldn't people jump all over this? Is it just that they don't want to make that large of a purchase or is it that they dont have storage for that much beef at one time or do they just now know that they could do something like that? Comments please, im thinking of sellin me some freezer beef!!