A friend called me the other day and wanted to know if another friend of hers got ripped off. girl 2 bought a side of beef and my friend was going to buy some of it. it was "grass-fed" and that's all i know about the origin of the beef. anyway, she paid $522 for about 170# of meat. this was supposed to be a "side of beef". seems to me she should have gotten more than that. am i right? i'm thinking if that's all the meat from a side it was a small steer. please let me know if you have any information. costs around here are 25 kill, around 35/lb hanging weight for butchering. thanks.

-- laura (okgoatgal@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002

Answers

Laura, the last hind quarter I got was 170 LBs. It ran about $250. Maybe she had to pay everyones processing. Sounds too high to me!

-- cowgirlone in OK (cowgirlone47@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

We haven't butchered (regularly*) in a long time, but always seem to get more than that. Grass-fed _may_ be a smaller, leaner animal, but still & all, if they are using dairy animal males or a non-grass breed, then it's time to move on to someone who knows what they are doing!

A couple of local butcher shops did a fine job for us over the years. One ended up being very expensive. One grocery store was kind of expensive, but we only got 2/3 the normal amount of wrapped meat we got from _any_ of the other places - same breed of animals, same weight. It was also trimmed _very_ close, etc. While we have no proof, we wonder if several lbs of sausage & hamburger on their shelves was provided by us for free..... :(

* I had a grass fed cow go down during labor, the vet suggested the best would be to make hamburger. The butcher shop guy came, got the animal, hauled it 15 miles, made 200 lbs of hamburger, and charged me about $230 total. Oh, and _they_ saved the calf (live) for me, better than the vet offered!

I thought that was quite a reasonable charge from the butchershop.

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), April 01, 2002.

Yes that's far too expensive, over $3 per pound! When you buy a side it is based on hung/pretrimmed meat so the weight you use to calculate isn't exactly what you get. 170 pound side means the calf weighed about 675 lbs live. Kind of depends on the breed but we shipped our Hereford calves at 800lbs or more. 2.20/lb for a side of beef here in Canadian dollars, that won't have an exact exchange figure to account for local pricing but beef must be under 2 USD, isn't it??!! I'd say she got ripped on price or is missing beef

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), April 01, 2002.

One of the ways to determine if she got a side or a quarter is to look at what types of cuts were produced. Certain cuts are only available on certain parts of the animal. If you get a side, you should have some of each type of cut. If you just got a hind quarter, you won't get them all. I'm afraid I don't know what cuts are where but if you go to a meat market they usually have one of those posters that show what cuts come from where. If you are missing some of the cuts, I would question whether or not you got a side.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), April 01, 2002.

The only way your friend can know for sure is for her to contact a local beef grower and find out what the price is per pound on the hoof. Add the per pound cut/wrap fee based on hanging weight and the kill fee and calculate the total cost. I think you will find it is more expensive than you expect, although $3.00+ a pound is steep. As for the total amount of meat, It would depend on how the steer was raised.

Before I bought beef by the side or whole, I would like to see the operation where it was raised. There are grass fed steers and then there are other grass fed steers.

-- Mac in AK (nospam@aol.com), April 01, 2002.