re: Anybody getting a 1/4 or 1/2 cow this fall?

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It's good stuff, and yes, the prices they are charging for tongues and tails these days are crazy. Both used to be inexpensive.

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When I was younger my mom would sometimes send me to Puglia's Grocery Store on St. Claude and Caffin Ave. to get beef bones from the butcher so she could make beef stock.

They'd bundle them up in butcher paper and just give them to me "No Charge".

Last time I was looking for beef bones to make a stock I stopped in Tag's Meat Market, a real butcher shop in Chalmette that still breaks down their meat. Those once free bones were being sold for $1 a lb. and that was over 10 years ago. Not sure what they ask for them now.

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I paid $5.86 hanging weight for 1/4 cow from Cross P livestock in Belville, price included delivery to Houston.

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On average, the take home weight to hanging weight ratio works out to between 60-65%, so there's a considerable amount of weight loss in the final product between bones and heavy fat trimming, etc.

Quick calculations show if the hanging weight is 300 lbs., you will wind up with 195 lbs. if you get 65% finished product. That brings the price up to $9.01 a lb.

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When I was younger my mom would sometimes send me to Puglia's Grocery Store on St. Claude and Caffin Ave. to get beef bones from the butcher so she could make beef stock.

They'd bundle them up in butcher paper and just give them to me "No Charge".

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Our former processor would ask we we wanted a bag of bones. I got them a couple of years and would dump them on the Primo and smoke them. I'd them give them to a friend who had a dog kennel. He'd offer them to customers as a lagniappe.

I could have made stock with them, but I would do that from the tail bones and other bones. I wonder if the current processor would give them to me.

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Can't hurt to ask is how I see it. Worst they can say is they have a market for them elsewhere.

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It's my cow (or my BiL's). They should just say yes. The are getting paid to cut it up and package it.

How do y’all keep your 1/4 cow? Deep freeze?

That's my problem , space . I kill Four deer a year and a bunch of ducks .

I can only tell you how I do it with my BiL. We usually split two cows between friends and family. I typically get a 1/4 or, more accurately, half of a half.

I pay my BiL, and he pays the processor, but I know what the processing costs are. We do pay based on the hanging weight. The tail, tongue, heart and liver are not an extra cost, it's just a matter of whether we want them.

My BiL raises the cows on the family farm, so all they eat is grass grown on that farm and hay that he cuts on that farm. For the last 4 months or so, he separates a couple and supplements their diet with corn that he grew on the farm. He has bred them to be 95% or more black angus, though he brought in Chianina bull a couple of years ago, which resulted in some huge steaks (tasty too).

The processor hard freezes it and, depending on what you want, will wrap it in paper or shrink wrap. A half of a half will fill a medium freezer at least half way. I also have a 120qt cooler and it will hold a half of a half but no more.

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There isn't a lot of meat on a tail, but it's great for soups and stews.

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I love oxtails slow cooked with gravy over rice. My travels have taken me to Indonesia over 40 times with 17 of those trips onwards to Bali, and I love Soup Buntut (They spell it Sup Buntut) which is an oxtail soup. I cook it here in Abu Dhabi when I miss it, as this Cajun cooks it much better than the few Indonesian restaurants here in Abu Dhabi.

Why would you buy grass fed when you can buy grass fed for all but the last month or so and corn and grain finished for a month or so? 100% grass fed is liberal environmental propaganda. What exactly is the health benefit per pound of grass fed be grain finished. Or the environmental damage done by a month on grain? The taste is so much better grain finished so Iam curious as to what health benefits or environmental benefits yiu think grass fed gives you. Please advise.