Buying a 1/4 or 1/2 cow

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yes, here is my cut sheet

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Lamotte Hook Ranch, kelsey Richard is sales rep. Im on 7 years straight getting a whole cow from them. beef seems to get better and better every year. i eat this basically every day unless im traveling

His pastures were once organic-certified and he was reportedly the first LA producer to get organic beef in Whole Foods. he found it to be too troublesome however to keep the organic cert. Richard Lamotte is the brains behind the operation. A true farmer and tinkerer. he brews his own fish hydrolyzate liquid and spreads it on his pastures. an interesting guy who knows a ton about cattle and soil

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Can I state the mostly obvious? The more hamburger you get, the fewer steak/roast options you’ll have. We split a 1/2 with in-laws once. Wasn’t cheap but was good quality. Dogs loved the organs.

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Well sure, most people will max out steaks. Some will max out roasts, and do the rest in burger. One guy we split with seldom cooked roasts, so he maxed out the steaks and put the rest in burger, other than specific cut requests.

To me, the burger is the most noticeable improvement over store-bought beef. The quality is just much, much better. You can get good steaks and roasts at the store, but the burger often comes from old dairy cows and bulls.

I believe you can buy a half from Carrier Farms out of South Lake Charles. Super high end beef. They have prime, Kobe etc. all all grain finished I believe.

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To me, the burger is the most noticeable improvement over store-bought beef. The quality is just much, much better.

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This.

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To me, the burger is the most noticeable improvement over store-bought beef. The quality is just much, much better. You can get good steaks and roasts at the store, but the burger often comes from old dairy cows and bulls.

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So - if you take brisket from the store and grind on your own, you might notice a big difference too? I'm willing to try that. Feels a little crazy grinding a piece I like, but it's still cheaper than chuck these days.

anyone care to mention any sort of pricing structure for this? I asked a buddy about this recently who had bought a half cow and he was too dumb to even give me a round about price, or even how it's priced. Is it simply per pound, or are they changing the pricing around based on the cuts you ask for?

Is this a if i have to ask what the price is then i'm not the clientelle for this product?
My expectation is that this should be cheaper than buying the same quantity of meat from the grocery store over the year, or at least cost about the same considering i'd expect better quality and it's packaged.

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The last half cow I purchased was $2.50 on the hoof

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while i appreciate your response, i have no idea what the hell this means.
are you trying to say $2.50/lb?

Thanks a bunch!

I"m assuming you get about 600lbs of meat from a full cow, including bones on ribs and a few steak cuts?

That's basically how I pay, except it is based on the hanging weight.

The animal is killed, beheaded, gutted, skinned, and the bottom legs are take off. What's left is a half or a side of beef. That is then weighed and hung to age 14-21 days before being cut up and packaged.

So, it is more like this:

(Hanging weight) x (price per pound) + kill fee + processing fee = total.

The kill fee is $75 and the processing fee is usually about $1 per pound. Might be a little more depending on whether you want paper or plastic, and you want it packed in boxes.

Some fat and bones are further discarded when they cut the side into cuts and burger, so what you walk out with will not equal the orginal hanging weight.

I ballpark it to maybe $4.00 a pound for everything, burger, steaks, roasts. The main reason we do it is it helps my BiL, and I know exactly what goes in those animals...just grass and corn and he grows both.

--I 'd ask how much a typical side weighs. Some butcher earlier than others. and some prefer smaller beeves. My BiL added a Chiania bull to his herd for a couple of years and he produced sirloins that would barely fit on my Primo Kamado. One processor did not like that at all -- too big and heavy for their equipment.