One word of warning - all processing plants are not the same. Check out any you are thinking of using by asking others who have actually used them.

As to packaging, the first calf we had butchered, we just let the butcher decide. The packages were too large for us and we did waste some meat. We learned it was better to have smaller packages than packages that were too large. You can always use two, if needed.

Yes, you do have to specify all bones. I just learned that. My son had a calf butchered and I said I wanted the soup bones I got what is probably the shank meat with the round bones. It is delicious, but I wanted to can some soup stock. Our butcher when we were raising the kids, just knew to save all bones.

If you have dogs, by all means ask for any organ meats you might not want for yourselves. Our butcher used to grind them and other parts we didn't eat for our dogs. It was packaged in 2 lb packages. I don't know if they still do that.

As stated, think about what you like to eat. My son had his calf made mostly into steaks and hamburger, some tenderized for chicken fried.

I'm not sure about the aging thing. It may be a matter of taste. We raised two calves and left them for my son to take to the locker plant. This was a new plant as the old one had since closed. They insisted it had to hang two weeks. The meat had absolutely no taste. Whether it was the aging, or something else that was done - I don't know. We ended up giving most of it away. It had no taste - no smell.

It wasn't the calf or the feed as we had raised it just like we did the ones before and after - it was something to do with the butchering process - might not be the aging. The next one, though, my son made sure it didn't hang that long.

So check out the butcher if you don't know them.

Here's a link to the butcher we use - his form for cutting instructions - to give you some idea of the choices you will have.

As for the ground meat, you should be able to specify what fat content, and I tell them maximum only enough fat to hold it together on a grill (that makes it somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% lean, many butchers will tell you that is not enough fat - but it is) Chili meat, or a coarse grind should also be an option for you.

You may pay slightly more for smaller packages (more wrapping, material) but I find that better than having to thaw a larger package of meat than we really need...I can always thaw 2. Your first time around, you may want to stick to cuts you are familiar with and are used to cooking in the time you allow for meal prep...you don't want a freezer full of pot roasts if your on-the-go family loves burgers or a quick steak. :)

I know this butcher isn't an option for you - I wish he were, he's very skilled and conscientious - but browsing his website might help you understand the process.

Oh, and I like my beef aged exactly 10 days, but I think that's a matter of personal taste.

Very interesting -- do you have a choice of calf or has it been "assigned" to you. Calf should be 900-1100 lbs if possible, about a year and a half, no growth hormones and corn fed. Full kernel corn will give a little different meat gran even than ground grain. Corn by-product (fermented) is really good. Hereford and Charolais or Scottish Galloway are all good breeds, but the breed will vary according to location.

There are new cuts of meat available through the Beef Cattle Association. Some of the groceries are carrying them. I don't understand butchering, but our butcher had heard of them and I asked for a video from the Beef Cattle Assn., and he was able to follow it with no trouble. One of these new cuts is Flat Iron Steak but for the life of me I can't remember the other three. Very good. Best use of muscle for greatest tenderness. Ask about these.

Yes, aging is absolutely necessary for tenderness. Flavor has more to do with breed and feeding, possibly disease, etc. We hang one day for every 100 lbs of beef on the hoof. DH raises organic beef. Once in a while a butcher gets a "flow" problem and hurries it through.

A decent butcher will wrap your meat first in heavy plastic and then in freezer paper. They should need no further attention. We keep beef sometimes as long as two years without any chrystallization. A self-defrosting freezer will cut down your "save" time considerably due to the fluctuation in temps with the self-defrosting process.

If this is yoru first time, get ready for a new experience. This is nothing like grocery store beef. You'll learn your cuts and your favorites. We'll never go back. Even the same cuts are different. Duck roast is one of my favorites and arm roasts. Porterhouse, definitely not.

gran2 - very interesting to read about the cornfed beef. It's been a long time since I've eaten any. I understand that the flavor is different than grassfed beef. I'm very happy with the taste of the grassfed. I'm sure that either one is a huge improvement over feedlot finished supermarket beef.

One big reason I wanted purely grassfed beef is the nutritional aspect. The fat on grassfed beef has a very high amount of omega-3 oil, the type found in salmon. the omega-3 fat has a lot of health benefits, from cardiovascular to reducing clinical depression. I won't go into it here. Anyone can find lots of info online if you're interested.

The butcher we used had a standard time for aging the carcass before cutting. I don't recall what it was, but we're happy with the result. 20 years ago, a friend purchased a half cow, and further aged the meat in the fridge before freezing it. Not sure if there was any actual benefit there, but I had no inclination to fool with it myself.

One really nice surprise was the great freshness of the ground hamburger. Meat that is ground, then immediately frozen is a LOT fresher than ground meat bought at the typical grocery store. We once left some thawed hamburger in the fridge's meatkeeper for 4 days before cooking it. Frankly, I was ready to throw it away based on experience with supermarket hamburger. To my delight it was perfectly good.

Because we have a lot of confidence in the butcher we used, we're comfortable cooking this ground meat extremely rare, and love the taste.

Calf=veal. Its not as tasty as older beef. A poor flavor in beef comes from bottom of the round. That cut is part of hamburger. Most common low fat hamburg is 93% meat 7% fat. Any higher for the meat, it would be dry and crumbly once cooked. On well aged meat, the fat will soften and almost go to a translucent state, kind of like its slightly melted shortening. Aging will add some mellow flavor to stronger tasting cuts. A local Whole Earth Food store has whole rib eye with the tenderloin attached. Its kept in a glass front refrigerator about 8-9 feet above the meat counter. The reason, its cost is about $23 per pound!! The fridge its in also ages it. They need a ladder to get to it, so customers are not able to reach it for themselves. Flank and brisket are similar and are the types used for corned beef and pastrami where they are slow cooked. Many supermarkets around here don't even offer flank cuts.

Wow everybody - thanks so much for your input!

I am part of a herd share of grass fed beef (a poly-ag farm, no hormones, antibiotics, etc) that I have seen but don't know which one will be mine. Also I am getting a 1/4 of a cow (thought I'd start small) so I guess I need to know which end I'm getting.

Good to know about smaller packaging as it is only me and my 6-yr-old son.

I'm not a big burger person - I like pot roast, brisket, stew meat and such (working mom's LOVE crock pots) and I only eat steaks at restaurants but I guess that can change.

Liz and morz8 thanks so much for the links and I will check them out and call my butcher.

My next endeavor is 1/2 pig coming in Feb...... I'll be writing all about the learning experience on my blog www.highdesertlocavore.blogspot.com

We do grass fed steers - about 1300 - 1500 lbs live wt. In addition to the comments above, I'd emphasize checking out the butcher shop yourself first - some places would gag a maggot, and some are absolutely spotless. A couple of thoughts, peculiar to grass fed beef:

You might have to pay a bit extra for locker space, but if you can, age the carcass 21 days. It will really help with getting it tender.

We ask for the steaks to be cut 1 1/4" thick - it seems to be a lot easier to cook a thicker piece of grass fed beef than a thinner one.

And depending on how well you know your butcher, what we found to be the best solution was to tell 'em that what we like to do is grill outside, and cut the beef with that in mind.

I'll second the motion about getting ready for a really great experience.

When we were raising our kids, we had two milk cows and we had the calves butchered. They were raised primarily on milk, grass and spring water. Boy, were they delicious.

When we sold our 'farm', we 'full-timed' in a motorhome for 3 years - so had to buy store meat. The first half dozen times I cooked the meat, I would throw it out - I thought it was spoiled. Not only is the taste different, the smell is different.

As someone else said, aging is probably just a personal preference. It was never anything I thought about until we got back the totally tasteless beef and it certainly could have been something else the butcher did. It didn't taste bad - just had no taste at all.

I do know the butcher hung the meat for what seemed like a long time. He said it was state law - but either that is not true or the last butcher didn't obey the law.

But happy eating.

The information about the healthful differences in grassfed and others is very interesting. I'm going to do some research.

The meat is hung prior to cutting to get rid of excess blood. Its usually refrigerated at about 34-38 degrees. The fat on the long aged meat is quite soft and jelly like sometimes. One of the reasons expensive and very tender prime cuts are costing that high price is because they are aged much longer. If mold develops its cut away, reducing the tender cut size and driving up is cost. I recall a few years back that some beef I had bought had a strong odor of liver. Thats ONE smell I dislike in a steak or hamburg. The freezer paper thats used for the meat packaging can vary in quality. If its heavy weight (thick) and has a slick plastic surface on one side, it should work well if also stored tightly in a plastic bag. Keep in mind that butcher paper can also be a thin silicone based product. In either case, both can have air pockets even after being tightly wrapped and bagged. That is the main reason I prefer the Food Saver plastic. The FS plastic has several layers of plastics, one is a nylon layer, which is very dense. The quilting embossed on the plastic is to aid in air removal and gives a tighter covering on the meat overall. Have you ever seen the commercials about Kosher hotdogs? They go on to say that they do not use any of the hind quarters of beef. eColi is still around and so butchers must be even more careful when handling fresh meats.

We are planning to have a cow butchered in the near future. How much beef can you expect to get from a cow as a percentage of the "on the hoof" weight?

The general consensus around here is 1/3 live weight goes into the freezer.

My son just had 2 young 20 month old cows butchered. The slaughter house was to age the beef for 10 days and my son and his meat-cutter father were to cut it up and wrap. My son got a call that they had time to cut and wrap and how would my son like it. All my son told them was average cuts, wrapped for a family of 3. All my son knows is steak and burgers. I was planning on canning the stew meat. He ended up with 8 one lb. packs of stew and 100 lbs of ground and about 15 rolled roasts and chuck roasts. Many nice T-bones, sirloin, and cube steaks, short ribs, soup bones and the ox tail. I'm talking one cow here.
The meat was wrapped in freezer paper, well labeled and taped. I like to wrap my meat in plastic wrap before placing into freezer bags. I'm worried about freezer burn. Is it possible to open the packages and adding the plastic wrap and re-wrapping in the freezer wrap? The ground beef is not a problem as it is in the plastic tube shapes.

Opening the freezer paper wrapping will wrinkle it more, making it hard to rewrap again. The freezer paper usually has a plastic coating on the inside that is resistant to sticking to meat once frozen. In the crevices of meat, however, the freezer paper can get caught and the meat would need a little bit of thawing to remove it. Freezer burn is never an issue if the meat were put into Food Saver plastic bags, air removed, and heat sealed. You could even leave the freezer paper on it, as that is used to protect it from freezer burn as well. It should be heavy weight (thick) freezer paper with the shiny plastic coating on the inside. The FS will usually pull out any possible air that may be trapped under the paper. Having air pockets in the wrapping will increase chances of freezer burn and drying out. Reduce the amount or hamburger to 1-3 pound packages, as well as forming some patties.

I've had a few of those "liver tasting" steaks from store bought and home raised beef. I don't care for that at all! Any idea what causes it?

Suspect it was butchered meat that was sitting on, or next to liver. Beef liver by itself is quite strong smelling and tasting. Thats why calves liver is usually sold, as its much milder tasting. I remember a friend of my mothers, who would eat a lot of raw liver! Not much you can do about that liver taste in a steak, except pour A1 steak sauce over it and/or add lots of toppings like onion and mushrooms to mask it.

a question was about per centages -- you have 3 different weights here:
1. live weight (or on the hoof) is literally walking around weight. 2. hanging weight is after the head, tail and hooves have been removed (and they're quite heavy) and excess stuff 3. in the freezer weight - total of packages that you put in the freezer. It will lose a little (maybe 8-12 % from hanging to freezer, but most is lost between the first 2 stages. Our best (with a belted Scottish Galloway) was 68% to the freezer. If you're only getting about 1/3, I'd say you need to find a different source for the beef.

gran2, are you saving a lot of the ribs, soup bones, heart, and organ meat? How big an animal are you slaughtering?

The 1/3 'rule of thumb' is just meat - few, if any, bones. If we got 68%, I'd need two freezers! :-)

Thanks gran2 and david52. We had a cow butchered many years ago and I seem to remember 60% as the number told to me by the butcher shop that did the work. I just can't trust my memory for that that many years.

yes, the organ meats are included. We usually slaughter at about 1,000 lbs, depending on the variety. The Galloways don't get that big until they're old, and some of the other kinds are nearly 1300.

I'll weigh in here. My latest Hereford, all organic and grass fed, just went into the freezer. He was 1100 pounds on the hoof and I put 588 pounds finished into the freezer. I do get all the soup bones and that adds a few pounds, but it still comes out to over 50%.

I don't pay any more for small packages than large ones, I get charged by the pound of beef that is packaged. I just paid somewhere around 40 cents a pound for nicely packaged and shrink wrapped beef. I don't bother to take the suet. When my WonderWeiner was still alive, I got the heart/tongue/liver and cooked them for dog treats. Now I use the heart and tongue for italian sausage, along with cuts of pork and beef.

As for calves, they aren't all veal. Veal depends on what they are fed and can be up to 800 pounds. Beef over 800 pounds or fed traditional hay and grain cannot be sold as veal, it's baby beef. Veal was originally a designation that the animal had been fed only milk, but now there is a specialized diet for veal.

Meat that tastes like liver? I'm suspecting that you got some second rate beef. Beef that is older is hung longer to "age" and make it tender. To me, it gets a very different texture than young beef, kind of softer, like liver.

Annie

Annie, that sounds about right to me for Hereford - ours do get some grain in winter...

An 1100 pound live weight works out to approx 720 hanging weight give or take, then breaks down to a rough 500+ without bones other than in rib steaks etc, t-bones. The butcher previous to the one we are using now used to weigh the packaging material before he started cutting, then again at the end of the session and charge for how much used....thus the slightly higher fee for more/smaller packages.

And most always told me I used more than they would have :) There used to be more than one area butcher who would make an appointment with customer, allow you to come and watch the cutting, wrap your own packages as he cut (and he always had me almost frazzled trying to keep up with him!)
That worked out great - I think. The wrapping was something I was somehow good at, and I would end up wrapping animals for other family members at butchering time too. But on the other hand, I knew what was in each package so no surprises, if I wanted hamburger in 1# size I could still do big packages of stew meat etc for bulk cooking later. And even wrap some little half pound portions to give to my mother living alone. I think those days are gone, our best choice for a very experienced butcher these days is an hour away and I don't see the meat once it leaves the barn until I've picked it up frozen.

OT - I wasn't exactly a city girl, but our food came from the grocery store :) I'd been married just a few weeks when my MIL called to happily tell me she was giving us a beef as a belated wedding gift. Which I was expected to wrap - Yikes! I was really intimidated, but got the hang of the wrapping pretty quickly, then learned to cook more than hamburger or roast. Oh, and we had to buy a freezer to accomodate our gift (installment payments) :), luckily had a little basement space with our apartment.

I process deer dureing deer season. I have raised a cow and now I won't to butcher it myself. I can't find a chart on the cuts of cows. I was wandering if you could provide me with a chart so I can cut this cow up myself. thanks
Patrick C Reece
3585 Rousseau Creek Rd
Thomson Ga. 30824

Here is a chart for beef cuts.

Have we mentioned that if you have it all ground into hamburger, the percentages will be much less? I guess it's because of the bones, but our butcher cautioned us about that once -- you just don't get as much. Seems a waste, anyway, missing all those wonderful filets and round steaks.

Please don't think this is an idiotic question and I do realize you posted this in 2008..Do all the bones and the ones with the bone marrow cost you more along with the fat and the ofalls . We are paying around $750.00 2.99 a lb for the quarter and that includes the butchered and vacuum sealed ( although that might a small bit more )? We are getting a 1/4 calf that will be butchered in mid to late June through a farmer friend of ours. My farmer friend is the one having it done. and told me what shop they use. I looked and here is the standard sheet of what they use. http://www.thebutcherblockandsmokehouse.com/dynamic_content/uploadfiles/3605/Butcher%20Block%20Beef%20Standard%20Cutting%20Instruction%20Sheet.pdf

Here is also the custom sheet . But I don't think my farmer friends do that. they just go with the standard if I understand correctly. http://www.thebutcherblockandsmokehouse.com/dynamic_content/uploadfiles/3605/Butcher%20Block%20Beef%20Custom%20Cutting%20Instruction%20Sheet.pdf

Here is the name of the place.http://thebutcherblockandsmokehouse.com/cutting-instruction-sheets

One last ? .. does anyone have a pic of what 1/4 ( I guess they call them calves ) looks like after it is butchered . I am trying to get an understanding of how much I will get once it has been butchered and vacuum sealed since we will be picking it up and I only have a car to do that in. I tried to find a pic on the internet but was unable to find what I was looking for. Thanks in Advance for your help.

I have not read the rest of this thread, just this most recent post, but I got 1/4 beef last week. The cow was apparently on the smaller side, at 610 pounds, so we paid our price per pound based on 1/4 of this total weight, so our portion was 152.5 pounds. We buy through a small local store, so our price per pound includes cut and wrap and everything in one number.

We have 36, one pound packs of ground beef, about 18 pounds of stew, stir fry and cubed steaks, 10 pounds of steaks (we opted for rib roast for Christmas rather than rib steaks, and we chose to have more other roasts than steaks, so our steaks are NY strip, top sirloin, tenderloin and tri-tip), about 30 pounds of roasts and 6 pounds of "soup bones".

I told them I wanted a share of the organs, they just left it for me to work out with the store, I think it depends what the other buyers want, but you should be entitled to a share of the organs.

I'm not sure why, and we didn't get this before, but they also packaged about 25 pounds of bones and 18 pounds of "beef scrap". I have not gotten these when we've gotten beef before, even last year through this same place. Maybe it's because we discussed the organs being for the dogs (though I declined "dog bones" ) but I wanted soup bones, I really don't know. I'm going to thaw a pack of the scrap and see if it's feasible to cook that for the dogs, but I may also share it with my neighbor who hopes to have a deer to process this fall.

Anyway, I just had to throw in that last part because all of this, including the 43 pounds of stuff we've not gotten before, fit in 3 cardboard boxes. Heavy boxes, but still will fit in the car with no problem. I think without the extras, it would have been pretty close to fitting in just 2 boxes.

Thanks greenbean08_gw(PNW)

greenbean, do you make stock or broth? I suspect that beef scrap would be a great addition to the stock pot. This assumes there isn't any organ meat in the scrap. We make stock in a large Nesco oven. You can can or freeze it. If you're short on space, you can concentrate the stock (cook most of the water out) before freezing. You just add the water back in when making soup or otherwise using the stock.

We're still finishing up the half cow we bought 3 years ago. The meat was wrapped in plastic and then in freezer paper. It hasn't deteriorated. Our freezer is self-defrosting, but we keep it at -10F

liz_h, that's what my mom suggested too. I make chicken broth, and made my first batch of beef broth this past winter. It really made our stew so much better, so I'm definitely going to do it again. I also recently acquired a pressure canner, and I practiced with it by canning a batch of chicken broth, so that will free up some freezer space for me, plus make it so much easier to use since I usually forget to pull it out of the freezer in a timely manner, lol.

There are 2 of us, but we eat beef 3-4 times a week, and I figure the 1/4 should last us about a year, or a bit longer.

The beef we're finishing was raised during a period of drought. It is almost devoid of fat, and sometimes has a bit of gamey flavor; moreso than other grassfed meat. Some of the steaks were downright tough. We've found that it's not too late to age them some more in the fridge. We unwrap the meat, and seal the frozen meat in a vacuum seal. We then refrigerate the meat for a week or so before cooking it. It has really improved the tenderness of these steaks.