Notes ·
What hanging weight means
It is the number the price is figured on, and it is not the number of pounds you put in the freezer.
Beef is priced per pound of hanging weight. That trips people up, because it is not the weight of the animal walking around, and it is not the weight of the boxes you load into your truck. It sits between the two.
What the number is
After an animal is slaughtered and dressed, the carcass hangs in the cooler. What it weighs at that point is the hanging weight, sometimes called the carcass weight. The hide, the head, and the organs are already gone. The bone, the fat, and the trim are all still there.
Why your freezer holds less than that
Cutting takes more away. Bone comes out of the roasts, fat comes off the steaks, and some of what is left goes into the grinder. So the pounds of vacuum packed meat you carry home are fewer than the hanging weight you were quoted on, and how many fewer depends on the animal and on the choices you make on your cut sheet. Ask for T-bones and the bone stays and counts. Ask for the filet and the New York strips cut off the bone instead, and it does not.
This is normal and it is how nearly every shop that cuts whole animals quotes a price. It is worth understanding before you call, so the number you hear makes sense and the number of packages you get later is not a surprise.
What to ask when you call
Ask for the current rate per pound of hanging weight. It is given by phone and it is not posted on this site, because it changes and a stale number on a web page is worse than no number. Ask what the animal hung at, if it is already in the cooler. And ask what the slaughter fee is, because that is charged separately from the cutting — both are on the processing page.
If you are bringing your own animal, the same weight governs the cutting charge. If you are buying a quarter share, a half, or a whole from the shop, ask how the share is figured before you commit.
Before you call
Have your cut choices roughly in mind. The beef cut sheet lists everything the shop needs to know, and the order planner walks the same questions in the same order and prints a sheet you can read off over the phone.
Questions