Buying beef direct from a farmer is a great decision you can make to ensure you’ll always have high quality meat in your freezer, but it’s a new and unfamiliar process for a lot of people. We want to help you understand the pricing of a whole or half cow, and that starts with knowing what weight we’re talking about when we say the cost of a whole beef is $4.25/pound.
Weights
LIVE WEIGHT: When you sell a cow at a sale barn you get a price per pound based on Live Weight (LW), also called “on the hoof.” If we took these cows to sell today, we’d get market price per pound at 1300 pounds.
HANGING WEIGHT: When you sell a cow for beef, the price is based on Hanging Weight (HW). HW is also sometimes called carcass weight, dressed weight or rail weight. This is the weight after they remove the cow’s head, hide and all the intestines/fluid, and it averages about 62% of the cow’s live weight. This is the weight the butcher uses to calculate processing fees, usually $1.00/lb.
TAKE-HOME WEIGHT: Take-Home Weight (THW), or the total amount of beef cuts you bring home, is less than HW because a cow hangs to age for 3 weeks and loses additional water from the meat. It enhances the flavor but decreases the weight. Also, the butchering process removes bones, fat and any inedible parts that can’t be processed into ground beef. If you order bone-in ribeyes, you’ll take home more pounds of meat than someone who orders boneless, but you both end up with an equal amount of meat. The THW will be on average about 67% of the HW.
Example
I’ll use a 1300-pound steer as an example to show how that’s calculated. At 1300 lbs., a steer brings a HW of approximately 806 lbs. and a THW of approximately 540 lbs. Of course, all the weights used here are estimates as each animal is different. We brought home an average of 570 lbs./steer last year.
Using those estimated weights, here is a comparison of our prices vs. a top Texas grocery store. These comparisons are ranked from highest to lowest quality. Our meat grades out at Prime and High Choice, so we average somewhere in between the top 2 grades. You can see that across the board our beef is priced less than if you were to buy Select, which is the lowest quality available at the grocery store.
The producer (us) gets paid for 806 lbs. HW instead of the 1300 lbs. LW, and the buyer pays for 806 lbs. HW but only takes home 540 lbs. HW is sort of a middle ground for both the buyer and the producer.
How to Order
On our Beef page you’ll see the options for different share sizes ranging from Whole Beef down to a 50-pound Butcher Box. Choose the option that works best for your family by selecting the “Get Beef” button to send us a message. We’ll reach out to confirm your choice and get a deposit. We also offer payment plans to fit your needs.
We have fall dates at the following butchers for 2022:
For West Texas customers: Keeter’s Meat – drop off in August, pick up in early September
For Houston area customers: Fisher Ham and Meat – drop off in September, pick up in early October
