Those prices aren’t for fats. Meaning those aren’t cattle that are ready to butcher. Except the packers, which are hamburger only.

Wow some of you have really great prices for your livestock at auctions. The link below lists prices for various species and grades as of May 7th. This small auction yard is about 20 miles from where I live.

Bryce

http://www.equitycoop.com/index.cfm?show=10&mid=200

...that's top end choice.....kinda like NAFA top lot lol sale average will be well below that

if you have a place to hang meat to cool out and a meat grinder....you can get hambuger on the hoof for 50 cents a pound much better than paying 5 dollars a pounds at the store

Yes we charge. my wife takes care of their pricing and they do get the family discount, but they also help us out alot whenever we need them. $2 is what we sell to anyone else.

A good steer will yield 65% carcass wt. and a carcass will yield 70% table meat. So a good 1400lb steer should yield about 6-650 lbs. of table meat. Prime steers are roughly 1.00lb live, so 1400 dollars, puts the meat at 2.30 a lb. add .50-.80 processing and you could have prime beef in your freezer for $3.00 lb.

Just called around to all the local slaughter houses. The earliest anyone can fit in 2 steers is December 21st. They are already 1250 lbs so it looks like we will be doing it ourselves. Never done one but it can't be too hard.

We also sell beef and we start at $2.00 hanging wt. corn feed Angus.

We get $450.00 a quarter. They pay the butcher . This year we were lucky to get an August pick up and slaughter date.for beef and hogs

Around here 600 a qtr is going on

It's not hard if you understand and are set up to handle the weight and have a place to hang.

Went up front and looked at my schedule when I got done with beef last night. Beef schedule is completely full to the end of October when I stop killing livestock for deer season. Hogs are full through August. It's crazy, I've never seen it like this before

We buy a 1/2 at a time. It runs close to $3/lb but the guy is certified organic and its all grass fed.

It's confusing, but "choice" in livestock market reports isn't referring to meat grade. "Choice" beef is a carcass grade. In a market report, "choice" is just a grade of live cattle. Same but different. LOL

Going to split a beef with my neighbor who raises them. So getting the half for $2.25 a pound hanging weight and the processing is 60 or 70 cents a pound. Figuring around $950 for 250- 300lbs of good beef. thats somewhere between $3.80 and $3.17 a pound for good home grown beef. We can't by greasy 70/30 burger for that here. Plus all the stores are limiting people to 2 packages of fresh meat.

I notice a number of people that are buying from a neighbor or farmer are paying $2.00 - $3.00 per pound hanging weight. Isn’t this a quite a premium?

Isn’t the price that’s a farmer is getting for his dress beef around $1.50 - $1.60?

That works out to a minimum of $150 extra for the farmer. $.50 X 300 pounds (half) = $150 Double that for a whole steer.

I get it that you know where the beef came from and how it was feed but I have eaten a lot of feed lot cattle over the years.

Am I missing something?

Are you figuring the shrink you take with the boning and trimming? I read you lose another 40%. As an example a 1200 pound steer will only yield 500 pounds of boned and trimmed meat.

The link below explains it pretty good.

https://extension.tennessee.edu/publications/Documents/PB1822.pdf

Yes, you’re missing a couple things. When its penciled out, most guys selling halves or wholes aren’t making a lot extra. Everyone is different, so I won’t quote dollars. But also consider, it makes no sense for me or anyone to feed out cattle and deal with customers if I can’t make it worth my time. That being said, you’re right that theres nothing wrong with grocery store beef. Truth be told, most of it is better than the off the farm stuff sold as “grass fed”. Which is code for unfinished and would barely grade Select.

I prefer the home raised when possible and affordable. We are fortunate in our area to have several very good meat markets that buy locally fed beef, hogs etc. and if one watches things closely there are many times some really good deals on certain cuts and one can get some quality meat for very favorable prices. Right now it does not pay to even look as people are hoarding. Some people just don't understand that animals get butchered every day. Some are very new to buying in quantity. I was in a meat market the a few weeks ago and there was a family with a cart almost full of meat cuts and I heard them talking about having rented some freezer space for the time being as they had not got their new freezer home and hooked up yet.

Bryce

Thats why i sais in an earlier post if i buy hangung weight then i won't pay kill fee or those type fees. Out here we would have brand inspections plus kill fee and some even add other charges if they can.

I can get a finished steer for 1.10 lb live weight or 2.50 hanging weight .
If i buy live the rest is up to me if i buy hanging all i have to do is call the butcher with cutting instructions. So it works out id say

The price difference is probably because of the cattle themselves. Ours are all beef cattle with no dairy breeds. This auction is in a small town but in kind of a market hub for lots of beef cattle. They have a weekly sale with usually around 3500 to 4500 head.

Last week they sold 2757 head.

Choice Steer Calves:

5/7/20

100-200 lbs. –$150.00-$165.00
200-300 lbs. –$150.00-$165.00
300-400 lbs. –$140.00-$168.00
400-500 lbs. –$135.00-$165.00
500-600 lbs. –$130.00-$153.00
600-700 lbs. –$120.00-$135.00
700-800 lbs. –$110.00-$125.00

This is from their report, not mine.