If you don’t have a hockey stick dividing up customers beef orders on the back of your half ton before you meet them at the hockey rink ….well….I don’t know how you call yourself a Canadian farmer.
Yesterday was pick up of a roughly 1000 lb 2 1/2 year old Hereford cow from the butcher. It dressed out (the hanging weight once all the head, hooves, hide and OFFAL removed ) at almost 600 lbs. Each side contains so many different cuts some very expensive if you were to buy them in the store like sirloin tip and boneless stew meat to less valuable cuts like blade steak and of course hamburger.
Is it worth it ?
You can buy half a cow at 273 lbs hanging weight at the going rate of $6 /lb =$ 1662.00 it may seem like a lot upfront but it actually is a really great deal. From that 273lbs hanging weight , you will yield approx 191 lbs of meat cut and wrapped (70% if you have a good butcher, which we do ) .
It costs most farmers $1.13 per lb just to butcher the animal in an approved facility, it takes us an hour to travel her there live and quite a bit more cost for feed cost, time and overhead to raise it right.
The retail value of the meat once cut and wrapped is much much higher, especially today should you have to buy it in the store.
And of course the more you eat of the animal the more value you get out of every cent it cost you for your half, like soup bones, broth bones, liver, heart, leaf lard etc
Now most people who buy a half or whole cow save all year to do it. Especially ones that are raised well with care.
You can also share a half which is really easy to do.
If you are able to, it also gives you wonderful food security if you have a medium size freezer to store it in and supports small farms .
Did you know almost 80% of the meat produced now is processed by four major companies (Carghill, Tyson, Smithfield, and JBS) and just one of their facilities processing 25,000 animals AN HOUR??
Compare that to our small local butcher who does maybe 10 -15 animals a week.
Hands down no contest for me.
Love Jenn xx