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Cattle processing?

7

7lazy77

Member
If I was to get a cow to butcher that weighed 1000#'s (live weight), approximately how much meat could I expect to throw in the freezer?
 
If you are talking a young 1000 pound animal not a old cow, you will get between 550 to 650 pounds of meat including the bones in your Tbones and so on.
 
Take it somewhere reputable....not a place that sells choice cuts in front of their store....I heard there was a guy somewhere around here local with a big van/reefer truck that will come out and kill the animal and process it on your place and clean his stuff and leave..that is what I would like to find. Strangely noone can seem to remember his name or number. Dropping one off and coming back a week or so later to get God knows who's meat seems like a game of chance to me.
 
The slaughter will yield about 60%. That means you have 600# hanging weight. From that you should get about 75% into the freezer. So if you went to the store and bought 450# of beef that would be about what you could expect in comparison. Of course that assumes a lot; a healthy steer (not a cow); a beef breed; a competent meat cutter; etc. These are the numbers that I have found to be accurate for me though.
 
I took one in August,didn't weigh him,but just from experience,I'd say 1100. Dressed 702,got back 413 pounds of packaged meat,207 of that was burger. Didn't include the heart,tongue and liver.
 
The "book" and cutting charts will say about 45 percent of live weight should be your cut and wrapped total. Depends too on cutting instructions, honesty, etc. I"ve weighed some that are not even remotely close.
 
I agree with 450 lbs of which processor steals 50 lbs leaving you 400 lbs to "throw in the freezer". Or you might get a deal like I once did. Fed animal weighed 1136 lbs at the grain scale on the way to processor. Hanging weight acording him(you pay for hanging weight)was 822 lbs (72% ,impossiable). I weighed what I brought home,including scraps and bones for the dogs,and got 352 lbs(31%). How do I recall the numbers? Because I still have the tickets which I showed to several people. BTW I had nothing to do with it but several months later the plant owner was forced off a country lane,beat and robbed of $300 out of over $1k that he was carring at the time. Hmmm , Boy must have rubbed someone wrong.
 
On my corn fed choice Angus steers I usually get around 35% of live weight packaged and in the high 20% for a fat heifer. Usually I have to have a 1200 steer to get the 400 lbs. A lean animal like a cow or grass fed animal will be more around 43% but yields less meat over all.
 
I think you mean Hanging weight GAry, that would be a take home of 65% meat yield and a hanging weight of much higher.
 
I always have a rule of thumb that if the locker is not clean from the loading cute all the way to the front step I will not go there. I like it when the customer can see the breakdown area and it has a smell of bleach water in the air. A good locker owns and uses a power washer and uses it between each customer. Went to pick up a half steer I had bought (didnt have a choice in lockers) walked in and off to the side 2 employess were smoking, Lady is cutting up a pork and comes up with out washing her hands and digs through the customer cut out cards, then I look on her hand to see a bandaide sopped with blood with no rubber gloves on! Last time I was there and I let my freinds know about it!
 
We had serious problems with the local slaughterhouse. The first time we took a beef there they let it loose in town. A while later they cut up another one with gristle in the ground beef and entire chunks of vertebra in the stew meat. There were also some steaks missing. Needless to say, we don't trade with them anymore. We are now licensed meat handlers so we must use an inspected plant for any meat we sell and have found a good one about 50 miles away.
 
i AM also a lisenced meat handler and the inspected plant I use does a much higher quality job then the local non-inspected facility.
 
the bad part is that you have to stake your reputation on what the slaughterhouse does. If they screw up the customer's order, the farmer is the one who looks bad.
 
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