What do you consider "costing a fortune" for the half? Is it that much considering the amount of meat? I figure that it will cost approx $6.00 lb for the actual meat you get. That is the average for all the meat, from ground beef to the best steaks. You aren't going to be saving a whole lot if you don' t eat all the cuts, but the thing is for me knowing where our meat is coming from. I haven't bought beef in probably 30+ years. Although it is not an "out of pocket" expense like if I were just "buying it".... We do figure in the value of the meat if it were sold. That is one of the reasons I eat my jersey steers. The calves aren't worth anything, the steers aren't worth more than $.50-.60 lb at 500+ lbs., so they are best for beef. We have the pasture and one or 2 extras out there eating are not going to make or break us. If we got into a severe drought time, they would be the first to go to butcher regardless of the size. But to buy a good "beef" animal is more than a jersey. The one thing about the jerseys, they take a little longer to grow out than a beef, but they also don't have the fat that a beef animal has. There are trade offs.
A 1200 animal is worth 1.15 lb live weight. Current prices from the "fat stock" sale last week here locally. Figure 50% of that is hanging. Another 50% is actual, in your freezer, meat. Now, that is rough estimates. USDA says that the hanging weight is 60% and another 60% is cut.... but we figure that 50% is good, then anymore than that is a plus. So 1/4 or 25% of actual live weight is meat. That makes that steer worth 3.50-4.00 / lb before you pay the butcher fee which here will run about $250..... or in the neighborhood of close to $1.00 lb, killed, cut, wrapped and frozen.... that is vacuum packed. I don't do any paper wrap anymore because vacuum packed will keep for several years if kept frozen, with no pin holes from moving the frozen packages around in the freezer. So if you get a good 300 lb of actual meat, that is about $1500.... but if you figure that you are going to pay 4.00 lb for good ground beef, or more, then you are getting nearly the value of the meat in ground beef. I wouldn't buy cheap ground beef so would probably spend at least 4-5.00 lb for it. I have no idea what it is bringing now. You will get approx 1/4 to 1/3 of your meat in ground beef and stew meat cuts. Trimmings.... but then you have to figure the difference in what those really nice steaks are worth. I get NY strips, ribeyes, filets, and then get the backbones to use for bbq like ribs, or soup etc. All the sirloins..... plus, I get as many of the bones back that I can.
Believe me, we are not making a killing on a beef in the freezer. We actually will do better selling it as a live weight of 1000 lbs or more and let the buyer do all the rest. Again, you have to figure that it costs us at least $500 (1.50 per day yearly average) per year to keep a beef cow. That's what we need to get out of a weaned calf JUST TO BREAK EVEN. Not counting our labor. It takes 18-24 months to get an animal up to 1000 lbs. So we have nearly 1000 in that animal just to get it to that size. We try to sell feeders in the 500 lb size but with steers only bringing 1.40 lb at that size, we are getting back about 700 . Heifers will bring about 1.20, 600. So if you figure that we are making an average 650 a calf, and 500+ is the cost of keeping the momma cow for the year, then we are making 150 per calf per year. That's not much for our labor. If we sell 100 feeders that is only 15,000 per year. Can you live on that, comfortably, and get ahead? That is not counting any major equipment breakdowns, or purchases. That is TOTAL pay for us.... if you figure out how much actual time we put in over the course of the year.... at the average of 40 hrs per week for 52 weeks, which is ridiculously low, that's less than 8,00 per hour. Especially since you figure we don't work 5 - 8hour days with weekends off. We might only "work" 4-5 hours a day in the winter, but then add in equipment maintenance you are up to at least 50 hours/week in the winter, plus anywhere from 8-14 hour days during the calving/growing/harvesting seasons. 6-7 days a week. It is figured that farmers in general make about $3-4 per hour actual labor wages.
We figure that we need at least $1.75 lb for steers @ 500 lbs., to make a small but fair profit. With the inflation rates, cost of living increases over the past 20 years, we should be getting 2.00 lb or more. LIVE WEIGHT.
Sorry, I didn't mean to carry this on so far. I just was wondering what you felt was too much to pay and wanted you to know that there were alot of costs that the average person doesn't see. If they are getting $8-10 per lb then they are making enough of a profit to be able to operate and make a living.
CWD is in deer here. Have to be careful of making sure they are healthy when you shoot. No guarantees. And planting deer plots is good except that you have no way of knowing if the ones eating are healthy. They travel too much to really be sure of one not being a carrier when it comes through. And the bucks will travel. So I am not sure that the plots are of any real advantage to "keep 'em home". Maybe.
