Raising Steer for Yourself

How much meat does a steer produce? I've read that a Hereford will come in at perhaps 1,200 lbs on the hoof, but we'll use 1,000 as a round number.

How much becomes meat hanging in the cooler? Probably about 600 lbs. but that gets whittled down further.

Grass fed beef tends to be leaner than feedlot beef, and there tends to be more usable meat, relatively speaking, but  we still  have to subtract somewhere between 25% and 30% of the hanging weight off the 600 lbs. Let's take off 180 lbs, leaving us with 420 lbs of beef.

The website at Chicamarun.com breaks the steer down thus:

A 1,000 pound choice steer will dress out at 61.5% (615 pounds). Of that 183 will be fat, bone and other loss. That leaves 432 pounds of beef.

Chuck (shoulder area): 164.8 pounds (26.8% of total carcass)

* Blade pot roasts-59.3

* Stew or ground beef-32.1

* Arm pot roast-22.3

* Cross rib pot roast-10.7

* Boston cut-9.9

* Fat and bone-30.5

Brisket (basically between front legs): 23.4 (3.8%)

* Boneless-9.4

* Fat and bone-14.0

Shank (basically lower leg below brisket): 19.1 (3.1%)

Short plate (belly under rib area): 51.0 (8.3%)

* Plate, stew, short ribs-40.8

* Fat and bone-10.2

Flank (belly under the loin): 32.0 (5.2%)

* Flank-3.2

* Ground beef-12.6

* Fat-16.2

Rib: 59.0 (9.6%)

* Standing rib roasts-24.2

* Rib steaks-12.4

* Short ribs-4.7

* Braising beef-2.7

* Ground beef 3.5

* Fat and bone-11.5

Loin (between rib and round): 105.8 (17.2%)

* Porterhouse steak-18.7

* T-bone steak-9.5

* Club steak-5.2

So, 420 lbs of meat should cost, what? Believe it or not, it looks like a live steer, bought in bulk, goes for just over $100 in the US and about $150 in Alberta if I'm reading the tables correctly. Its going to take more investigation, but it looks to me like there's room here. If the rancher is getting that little then there has to be a lot of marking up at each stop from pasture to table.