A heifer is a girl and a steer a boy...like the difference between a tom turkey and a hen...not much but for size.
I am sure there are places where you can buy a calf to have someoner aise for you....and you could insist it be fed only grass or whatever you want....I am sure that would be more expensive.
Depending on where you live you ought to be able to buy a half a grass fed steer or heifer...maybe not so easy in New York City...but anywhere there are farms you should eb able to find what you want. But unless you know a farmer it's really just as easy to go through a butcher.
Linda C

Probably Annie can weigh in on the sex of the meat...

But I don't care if it's boy or girl..I prefer it grass feed on a pasture. Some of the best ground beef I've had was from an old steer that lived a long happy life in a pasture doing what steers do...and the whole honking thing was ground beef...so my ground beef was more than ground chuck or sirloin..it was all the "tender" bits added in too.

Delish...

As to buying in on the raising of the cow you want to eat. I'd love that. And it's probably a bit less costly at the end. I know that some handle it buy splitting the cost of the calf, and the feed (if needed to supplement in the winter). And then you just have the slaughter and cut and wrap fees. Versus mark up on some of those things at the end.

A half is a lot of meat even if its a smaller heifer.
She will need a full sized freezer, for sure.

Plus you get many cuts, some she will not have purchased in the past unless she specifies what she wants and has the rest ground up. You get lots more blade steaks than strip steaks, for instance.

Plus its tough to slow the butcher down and do things truly custom so you will get many 1 lb packs of burger but then a 12 lb roast, if you aren't careful.

It sure saves money. Around here burger is in and about $2 the kilo, with good roasts getting to $14 or so. You can buy a half for in and around $5 kilo (bear in mind this is hung weight, includes all the scraps and stuff you won't use, sinew, cartilage and fat, etc.) and cut/wrap/freeze is another $2-3 kilo. So, your burger costs $8 kilo but so does the prime rib, the sirloin roasts, the top sirloin steaks, etc.

We find it best, in our situation, to buy freezer packs from the butcher. You get smaller quantities but it is all stuff we will use for not much more per kilo. For instance, we would never use frozen burger; a half, even a quarter gives you a lot of ground beef.

The biggest difference between a steer and a heifer is size. Heifers are smaller. Steers become steers because they get bigger in the hind quarters and good cuts, bulls get big in the neck and shoulders. Even a bull can be eaten if he's young, but he'll still be smaller in the hind quarters.

Half a beef is a lot of beef, even my smallest animal last year yielded 210 lbs for half after everything was cut and packaged.

Here I'm lucky to have Carl, who has done my meat cutting and packing for decades. He does all the special requests, like trimming the ribs for burger and cutting leg bones into dog sized pieces and he always makes sure I get the oxtail. I think the ribs are too fatty, I don't care for them, so they always get trimmed for burger.

I don't know about buying in on raising a calf, no one here does that. I sell by hanging weight, which is after slaughter but before the side is trimmed.

I usually get Porterhouse, sirloin, T-bone, rib steaks, round steaks, chuck roasts, the brisket. Everything else gets ground to burger and I always take the soup bones for stock, which I make in large batches and then freeze.

Here burger is about $2 a pound, T-bones were on sale for $5.99 a pound, chuck roast is $2.79 a pound this week. The man I sold a half to last year told me it ended up costing him about $3 a pound after he paid to get it packaged. As mentioned, that's $3 for burger, but also $3 for brisket, porterhouse, T-bones, everything.

Like Terri, I like grass fed, which is a good thing because that's what I raise, LOL. It's leaner and healthier, and I don't hesitate to feed it to my girls and my grandkids.

Annie

Thank you all for your input :) I'm going to copy and send this thread off to my daughter tonight.

My dad used to buy a half side, but I was too young to know how he made the choices for our family, so your knowledge is very much appreciated!

You can buy a quarter of a beef....and you can get either a hind quarter a front quarter or a mixed quarter.
Obviously a hind quarter is the best and most expensive....because it contains all the good stuff....a mixed quarter will be less expensive and get you some chuck, but less round and loin....and a front quarter will be cheapest but get you lots of good hamburger as well as a few good roasts.
Linda C

There is a difference between steer and heifer. If the heifer is butchered at the wrong time in her cycle the hormones will flavor the meat and you get what they call a "high bright" flavor, which you are very unlikely to appreciate.

I always raise or purchase steers. The meat from bulls often has a hormone tainted flavor, also.

If the butcher will not cut exactly as you wish, find another butcher.

A huge advantage of custom butchered meat is that you can have the meat hung long enough to develop some really nice flavor. You don't get that from the grocery store because aging costs too much.

If you are buying from the farmer, be sure to tell him if you want liver, heart, tongue, etc. Many people don't and those get thrown away.

Don't be afraid of "strange" cuts. Recipes abound and some of the cuts you can no longer buy in the market have the best flavor. I love short ribs and have several really good recipes for them. Paul Prudholme has some brilliant short rib recipes.

oregonwoodsmoke, I wouldn't butcher a bull more than 12-18 months old because they do tend to be "strong" but last year's beef was a bull because when he was supposed to become a steer, my BIL "missed one". In fact, both animals were "half a bull" and they both tasted fine, but they were both less than 18 months old.

I seldom eat heifers because they are more valuable as breeding stock than they are as beef, but when old cows become too old for breeding they become hamburger and I've not noticed a difference in taste there either. Then again, I've been eating my own beef for my whole life, so maybe I'm used to it.

Grandpa told me it was because I don't have a bull, I rent one for two months out of the year and when I butcher in the fall the bull has been gone for a couple of months.

I do agree on the hanging, though. Well aged beef is more tender and has a different flavor than one who is freshly butchered. Age them too long, though, and you get a flavor that many people don't appreciate either.

Annie

We never butchered heifers, only steers, so like Annie I have no experience in that regard.

I am not fond of "old cows"; while some were edible as ground beef others were not enjoyable. However, that may be due to the fact that we were reluctant to dispose of cows until they were very old indeed.

Hanging beef is definitely preferable; I find beef that has not been hung to be bland. However, for anyone butchering or paying a butcher, be aware there will be a significant weight loss with hanging through dissipation of moisture. You aren't necessarily being cheated.

I do agree there's something to be said for variety meats. My DH's favorite lunch meat is tongue. I'm not wild about it myself but will gladly cook it for him. Examine any old cookbook and you'll see numerous recipes for stuffed beef heart and other variety meat preparations.

Carol

Carol, Dad always liked sandwiches made from the tongue too, although I found it startling to open the refrigerator door and find a big ole' cow's tongue, whole on a plate, waiting to be sliced.

Even if you don't eat the "variety meats" yourself, I have found that they make good dog treats, I always used the liver (which the doc told me not to eat because of my cholesterol levels) to make homemade liver treats for the dogs. The heart and tongue gets ground up and added to sausage meat or made into homemade dog food. The soup bones are roasted in big roasters and made into homemade stock. I have refrained, so far, from asking for the cheeks, but one of these days.....

Annie