Learn About Beef Cuts and Pricing
To better understand the amount of meat you may expect from a finished beef animal, the first step is understanding the difference in live weight compared to carcass weight. When a beef animal is harvested certain components of the animal such as the head, hide, feet, blood, and viscera (internal organs) are removed. The remaining lean (meat), fat (adipose), and bone, makes up the carcass hanging weight. Calculating dressing percentage will help determine how the carcass may yield from the live animal and will be influenced by many factors such as muscle score, genetics, amount of fill, and more.
Dressing Percentage and Carcass Fabrication
The next thing to consider is more weight will be lost when a carcass is fabricated, or broken down into smaller (i.e. retail) cuts. The percentage of carcass weight remaining as “take-home” product is called the carcass cutting yield.
Chilled Carcass Weight *
Carcass Cutting Yield = pounds of “take-home meat”
Carcass cutting yield is variable and depends on the carcass’s fat thickness (leaner carcasses have a more desirable and higher carcass cutting yield), muscling (the greater the muscling the higher the yield), and the amount of bone-in versus boneless retail cuts. Deboned, or boneless, retail cuts will lower the carcass cutting yield.
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Requesting closely trimmed and boneless steaks and roasts and/or trimmed, lean (90:10, lean:fat) ground beef will result in less pounds of take-home product. This may be advantageous depending on freezer space availability and eating preferences. It is important to understand that the amount of edible meat will be the same regardless if the retail cuts are boneless or bone-in.
Important Note: Water Loss
Hot carcass weight is the weight of a carcass prior to chilling. A beef carcass consists of 70 to 75 percent water. As the carcass chills and ages, water will be lost through evaporation. In just the first 24 hours a carcass can lose up to 2 to 5 percent of its initial weight.
Understanding Primal vs Retail Cuts
Purchasing Locally-Raised Beef
The first cuts made to a whole carcass are to divide the carcass into primal cuts (Figure 1). Each primal cut will be further fabricated into a variety of bone-in or boneless retail cuts. For example, the loin may be broken down into bone-in rib, T-bone, porterhouse, and sirloin steaks with boneless alternatives while the chuck may be broken down into bone-in or boneless chuck and arm steaks and/or roasts, and/or stew meat (Table 3). Ground beef comes from trimmings of multiple primal cuts especially the chuck and round due to their muscle structure and lack of tenderness. Ground beef can also be further processed into specialty meats such as summer sausage and snack sticks.
Many farmers and locker plants sell beef by halves, quarters, or split sides. Beef carcasses are split down the spine into two halves for easier handling, better chilling, storage and aging processes – this results in what is referred to as ‘a half of beef’. When determining roughly how much meat you should expect from a half of beef, take the pounds of meat previously calculated for the entire carcass and divide by two.
When buying a quarter of beef you are normally either buying an entire forequarter or a hindquarter from one of the half sides. If you purchase a forequarter you will receive cuts from the chuck, rib, brisket, and plate. If you purchase a hindquarter you will receive retail cuts from the loin, round, and flank. It is important to understand that if you purchase a hindquarter you will not receive cuts from the chuck, rib, or brisket such as arm roasts, chuck roasts, ribeye steaks, etc. (refer to figure 1.)
For this reason we normally sell a split side meaning you are purchasing a quarter of the meat with an assortment of cuts from an entire side. This option seems to be most desirable if choosing to purchase a quarter beef because it gives you cuts from both the fore- and hindquarters.
Example of Meat Yield Calculations
It is important to understand that the example calculation below is just for informational purposes only to illustrate the process. We have no way of knowing exactly how much one of our animals is going to weigh. There are certain weights that are considered more ideal and we try to adhere to those weights. Our animals will normally always weigh between 1200-1400 lbs. So the calculations below would change if the animal your meat is coming from weighed in at 1300 lbs as a live animal. If you continue to order from us this means that what you pay this time will NOT be what you pay another time because the weights of the animals is always going to be different.
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Meat Yield Calculations (example):
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Live weight x typical dressing percent = hot carcass weight
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1200 lb x 62% = 744 lb*
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Hot carcass weight x (100 – shrink) = chilled carcass weight
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744 x (100% – 3.5%) = 718 lb
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Chilled carcass weight x carcass cutting yield percent = pounds of take home meat
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718 lb x 67% = 481 lb
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For example: *744 lb (hot carcass weight) is the weight being used to calculate your price in this example.
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