Does this sound right?

[cowman]

The neighbor was telling me he got a steer cut and wrapped and the bill came to $550! He figures he probably got about 550 lbs. of meat or about a $1/lb.?
If his steer weighed 1200 lbs he probably would have got about 85 cents live or $1020? Divided by 550 lb. that comes to $1.85 lb for a total cost of $2.85/lb.?
Now maybe that is still a bargain or is it? He had to haul it over to the butcher and haul the meat back.
We kept a heifer back and are feeding her up to slaughter in early December but will do her at home.

[ivbinconned]

Split a beef with another individual in April of this year. My side of beef weighed 320 and my cost which included my half of the slaughtering cost, cutting and wrapping was $172.00.

[Bez]

Does this sound right? Yup -I would say he might even have got off a little cheap.

My numbers might be a bit different than for your area, but here goes:

Kill fee - 35 - 50 bucks
They keep the hide
Cut and wrap fee - 40 - 55 cents
a pound.

You want this fellow to stay open, he has to pay his bills as well - nobody rides for free anymore. You are fortunate you can butcher at home - most cannot.

Not an attack - but here is an observation on many:

I would hazard a guess that you do not often stop by the local grocery store. Certainly the majority of ag folks never hit the major centres often. If you do, make sure you hit the local butcher specialty shops as well.

No matter what folks "talk" about - other than the loss leader on a small supply of burger - it is RARE - read VERY UNUSUAL - to find meat at the counter going for less than 3 - 4 bucks a pound.

I was in hated Hog Town at a small but busy grocery last month - regular burger was on sale for 3.75 a pound. Regular roasts of beef were running in the two and a half to 3 pound range and were priced at six to nine dolars a pound - making them - on average - 14 - 18 dollars in price. A little further exploration showed the prices in other stores were very, very similar.

My continuation travel had me in Ottawa later that week - prices were about 50 cents to a buck higher in the two or three stores I decided to look at.

A good one for you now - Prime rib roast in one store was about 28 bucks a kilo - my calculator says that is almost 11.42 a pound - the roast I saw weighed in at 7 kilos for a price of 196 bucks! The guy behind the counter told me he sold lots every week. That is a 196 dollar roast. I say again 196 BUCKS!!! Wish I could latch on to some of that coin.

He told me his real hot seller in the summer was 1/2 to 3/4 pound steaks - frozen and boxed. He sold them at about 19 bucks a pound. Folks out there do not want big chunks of meat any more - they want small steaks and roasts unless they are giving a dinner party.

The major population centres pay for their food in a big way. It just does not get back to the primary producer - which is why over the past two years we have cut herd sizes and costs here - we will probably only have a few cattle left on this place for the family this winter. I make more money writing from my kitchen table now than I can on cattle. I am seriously considering letting the neighbour pay my taxes next year.

Have a good one,

Bez

[WoolyBear]

Sounds about right BEZ......... Pretty hard to convince the SOB and the general public in Ottawa that theres problems in the Beef industry anywhere. If the producer got his fair share of what the retailers got, then this would solve many more of the problems out there.

not many of us would even be able to afford our serving of that Prime rib.

[Horse]

Back about 25yr ago I was at a meat cutout demonstration that the gov put on and they cut and weighed and priced each cut and figured the loss of cuting and the trim I forget the outcome but it sure would be interesting to see how it would look today.
It was when they changed the grading and they used a grade A and a holstien str,mabey some of you that are conected to the ag depmt could arange for a new demonstration or find the old one, and change prices acordingly.