How Much Meat is a Half Beef? Explained in 3 Minutes!

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Buying half of a cow is a great way to insulate yourself against price hikes and foot shortages but if you’re new to buying bulk freezer beef the process can seem a little overwhelming. This is a simple and quick explanation about how much meat you could expect to get from half of a beef.

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🐄 If you are in the Western Kentucky area and want to buy farm-fresh beef for your freezer please check out our friends at Futrell Farms in Cadiz, KY. The Futrells are great people who will treat you right. Tell them we sent you!

Food costs keep going up and there’s no sign of a slowdown, and store shelves are often empty nowadays. Buying a whole or half beef for your freezer is a great way to hedge against today’s uncertainty so you and your family don’t have to worry. Plus, buying from your local farmer or rancher supports your local community and the product you receive is often vastly superior to what you can find in the grocery store.

So if you want to buy a whole or half beef how much meat should you expect to get? For our family (2 adults, 2 young kids, and 1 infant) a half beef is about perfect for a year’s worth of food. We eat beef twice or more a week; the rest of the week is usually chicken, pork, and maybe some fish or venison.

The live weight (AKA on-the-hoof weight) of the beef is how much that animal weighs when he steps off the trailer and goes in to the processing facility. The live weight of the animals does NOT directly translate into the amount of meat; a 1200lb steer does not yield 1200lbs of beef. Once the animal is dispatched and the hide, head, and internal organs have been removed we are left with a hanging weight (AKA carcass weight). Usually on beef cattle the hanging weight is approximately 55-60% of the live weight of the animal – it can be more or less for a variety of reasons but this is generally accurate. Please be aware that DAIRY CATTLE breeds like Holsteins do NOT grow muscle like beef cattle. Once the carcass has been butchered the amount of meat you yield is generally about 60% of the hanging weight. This again is an approximation (dry-aged beef weighs less because moisture has evaporated from the meat during that process, bone-in meat weighs more than boneless, etc.) but will get you close to that number.

So for example, the beef steer in our freezer weighed about 1290lbs on the hoof. The hanging weight was 760lbs (59%), and we put about 225lbs of meat in our freezer (60% of half).

According to the American Angus Association a carcass will typically yield 31% steaks, 31% roasts, and 38% ground beef and stew meat. On our beef we ended up with 98lbs (!) of ground beef; boneless ribeyes (12), filets (10), NY strip steak (12), and boneless ribeyes (6); brisket (1), chuck roast (5), arm roast (2), rump roast (2), round roast (2), round steak, and sirloin tip steak (6); other cuts include flank steak, inner and outer skirt steaks, stew meat (10), and soup bones (4).

Our percentage of ground was likely a little higher than expected because we are trying a few less common cuts. These include chuck eye steak (cut from the center of the chuck primal), flat iron steak (2), tri tip roast (1), teres major (1), Korean style short ribs (maybe 6 packages, forgot to count them), and Osso Bucco (cross-cut foreshank, 12). To extract some of these cuts the primal must be broken down a little further, meaning more trimmings for ground beef are produced.

Thank you for watching this video! If you found it helpful please consider subscribing to the channel – there’s always something exciting going on here on the farm. See y’all soon!
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We just got our half cow almost exactly the same size/yield. Happy to have the freezer filled and good quality meat for the year!

amariahg
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Just got a whole cow live weight was 1, 424 lbs hanging weight of 861 lbs and 547 lbs of meat for the freezer and some for my mom.

fordvg
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There's so much ground beef because butchers / meatcutters hack swathes off each cut for resale presentation reasons. if you don't need the cuts to be peachy trimmed to look good in the shop and appeal to customers, you can leave the 'tidying up' trims on the cut and a fair bit less will go to ground beef from the cow. I'm always shocked by how much of a prime cut butchers cut off and grind in the name of looks.

jrussell
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The guy we buy our feed from grows out cattle and sells the beef. We've only gotten 50 pounds or so at a time, but it is far superior to the stuff at the chain grocers! Eventually we will buy out a half cow. That all looks so fun to experiment with!

jessicakarynecoosey
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Your channel was recommended to me by YT. Enjoyed the video so I went ahead and subbed. I’m always interested in buying meat in bulk and how to stretch money which seems to run very short these days.

CaptchaNeon
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Not to mention how it's raised, fed and processed

briansteele
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This was very succinct and thorough! Great job and congrats on filling that freezer!! What was the approximate price per pound, all told?

SageandStoneHomestead
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Rocky was defiantly tenderizing that beef! Yes the choices can be overwhelming, we took 3 hogs to be processed and it took us a while and back and forth with the butcher. I would love to see cooking videos i always enjoy watching heathers and learning something new🍳

chickensandapug
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price man how much for it and how much to butcher and all the costs ? and well how much room in a freezer does one need? it would be a nice gift to a family i know a guy has 11 kids

Specules
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You can turn the ribeye steaks into prime rib cuts as well correct?

kenkorte
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We just received our 1/2 cow and it came out to 185 pounds....highly disappointed. It's good beef because it is an American wagyu and dry-aged for 21 days, but I was expecting at least 225-250 pounds of meat.

sunshinesdad
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Great information, thank you!!
But I'm little did you say you got half cow, but numbers you presented was for whole cow....??
I just got whole cow and trying to figure out how much freezer space I'll any idea? Thanks again. Very understanding strait forward information!👍

vlastimiljanko
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I am trying to understand why so much meat goes into ground. I never butchered a cow, but when I slaughter a yearling sheep I only keep about 10% of the meat on the animal for ground, mostly in trimmings. And this is despite sheep not having larger primals like beef does.
I am looking into very similar cuts to yours from a half, but maybe having more ribs (short, back, plate) and keeping the picanha. Is it possible to have more cut as stew meat or "chunks" that I can cut into smaller roasts/fajita/stirfry etc..? I want to keep ground beef closer to 20lbs
Thank you

DrMomans
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I just purchased a half steer and it was delivered in cryovac bags but fresh not frozen. Unthinkingly, I threw it all in my upright freezers and now each bag is stuck together. I've spent 2 days defrosting the freezer to get them unstuck so I can take some out to cook and try to separate each bag but they will probably all stick together again. I'm intending to buy a whole steer next time. What do you recommend so I can avoid this issue. They won't deliver them already frozen or wrapped in paper. I can't just wrap each piece separately in paper as that would take me all day. Should I put them in the freezers and start them freezing and time it so that they are almost frozen but not yet too stuck together and then move all the bags around to separate them? What do others do? Any ideas would be appreciated?

AnneFS
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What’s the best deep freezer size for half beef?

petergriffinson
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Where do you order and how much was it?

Ava-ocdg
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00:50 that camera angle change was completely unnecessary.

nih
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Thats a profit about of, about to tell you

JavierGarcia-mj
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👎🏾👎🏾 you never showed how much it was and what it looks like in the freezer that was the whole point of the video.

Mr.Weatherspoon
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This video is amazing with so much information.  Thank you
Sadly, I am armed with the information and still managed to get burned.
I am so disappointed in my first and possible LAST order of a side of beef here in Canada
Grass Fed Grain Finished Angus
383 Hanging weight before aging at $6.00 CAD per pound
YIELD:
113 lbs roasts, steaks, short ribs
77 lbs Ground Beef (10/90)
2lb 5oz Tenderloin (asked for tenderloin to be cut into 3 pieces) I thought tenderloin should at the very least be 4 pounds!! Not even 3 pounds of tenderloin!!??
192 lbs Total  --- 50% yield in meat
I asked for the bones and fat 13 lbs of super clean no meat bones and 11 lbs of tallow.  
Paid $2300  
QUESTION: Should I have expected a bit more yield in the meat?  
I will be reaching out to the abattoir diplomatically to see if they will get me more bones and fat at the very least.

maryjayne
visit shbcf.ru