Sep 28

Sep 28 The real numbers: what does a grass-fed heifer/steer actually yield

Photo of ribeye steak from one of our grass-fed steers from Parker Creek Ranch. Photo credited to Joe Saenz, Swine House and Box Street Social.

One of the most common surprises in our beef business is how much edible meat comes from an animal carcass. Even folks who have had their meat custom processed for years often balk at how much meat actually goes in the freezer. Hopefully this article will help you to understand how a 1000 lb steer or heifer fits in your chest freezer.

Let’s start by taking about the dressing percentages. This is the percent of the live animal weight that becomes carcass weight. When the animal is trailered to the processor it may loose 2% to 5% of it’s body weight from stress through the loss of fluids. How much is loss depends on how stressful the load/offload was and distance traveled. This is why it’s beneficial to work with a processor located within a reasonable distance. I would never advise cattle to travel more than 5 hours to a processor. More than 8 hours and you risk animals becoming severely stressed or even death losses occuring. Low-stress stockman ship will also be important for you to practice while loading the animal. Most processors I have been around handle the animals very well. They know that stress hormones can have a significant impact on the quality and taste of the final product, thus they typically handle the animals in a low stress manner. My biggest rule for handling the livestock is “slow and easy” and absolutely no electric prods. Let’s use a 1000 lb live weight animal to keep the math simple. So, if I traveled an hour to the processor and the animal wasn’t under any kind of unnecessary duress it will probably loose about 2% of its body weight. This put’s us at 980 lbs assuming the animal is killed immediately. Once that animal is killed the processor will remove the head, skin and gut it. This is when the processor weighs the animal and is often referred to as the “hot weight,” or “hanging weight.” Our carcasses at Parker Creek Ranch typically yield on the low end at 62% and on the high end 65% of live weight. In other words, on a 1000 lb live animal you can expect somewhere between a 600 - 640 lb carcass.

Once again, there is another significant portion that will not end up in your freezer or the meat case for your customers. Let’s move on to the example in Figure 1. This heifer had a hanging weight of 527 lbs. and yielded approximately 388 lbs of product for sale. We sell everything from head to toe, so that yield includes bones and offal that are listed on the inventory yield. This particular animal yielded from the hanging weight about 74%, meaning the shrink and lost to waste (spine, tendons, etc.) was about 26%. Remember, they weighed the carcass hot on the rail. Shrinkage occurs from the carcass cooling to below 43 F and evaporation during the dry aging process. Our carcass yields are typically between 73 - 80%. Once again, most folks don’t account for bones and offal in their carcass yield numbers. If we remove those the yield is closer to 62 - 65%. Our animals typically finish with ideally a 1/4 inch of back fat over the ribeye. Once we do an 80-20 lean on the grind there isn’t any wasted or excess fat on the carcass. I didn’t get to weigh this particular animal alive so I can’t tell you what the exact percentage of edible product comes from the live weight. It’s typically around 33% to 40% depending on cuts, bones and offal.

Recognize that these are average figures. These can vary considerably due to the fat and lean composition of the animal, as well as the trim level and methods of cutting the meat. However, it does demonstrate that it’s a relatively small percentage of the live animal that ends up in the retail meat case as edible red meat. This is one factor that helps explain the difference between price per pound of a live animal and price per pound of retail beef. If you look even further at the specific cuts of beef, it becomes even more evident why some cuts are considerably higher priced than others in the retail market counter. Again, using our example in Figure 1, and cutting the carcass into boneless steaks, roasts and ground, the highest percentage goes into hamburger (ground meat) at around 37% or other cuts at around 50%. These numbers vary greatly depending on how you cut the carcass. On our carcasses hamburger typically accounts for 30 - 40% of the product. The next highest portion is bones and offal which is usually around the 20% range. The good stuff including strip loin, tenderloin, sirloin and rib eye steaks typically only account for around 8 - 12% of the carcass weight. Each one of these cuts amounts for no more than 3% of the carcass. The low percentage and quality eating experience of these particular products is why the retail price is so high when you buy these products by the individual package. The rest of the carcass includes various cuts like skirt, brisket, ribs, round, etc. which accounts for the greatest portion of the animal. The amount of hamburger and other cuts changes for us depending on the quality of the carcass. If it grades Select (meaning little to no marbling) then most of the carcass goes into hamburger, otherwise we cut and fabricate the carcass.

So, to summarize: the heifer in Figure 1 probably had a live weight of about 900 lbs. We use small framed, easy fleshing cattle for our grass-fed, grass-finished program. This heifer had average muscling, yielded a 527 pound carcass. The 527 pound carcass yields approximately:

13.77 lbs of Rib eye or 2.61%
6.24 lbs of Strip Loin (Ny Strip) or 1.18%
4.59 lbs Tenderloin or 0.87%
13.75 lbs Sirloin or 2.61%
50.46 Other cuts (Brisket, Skirt, Flank, Flat Iron, Ribs, Chuck and Round) or 9.57%
196.67 lbs Ground or 37.32%
102.98 lbs Bones and Offal or 19.54%

At Parker Creek Ranch we sell finished grass-fed cattle by the hanging weight. We do this for one reason: we can utilize a quality, custom meat processor that is only a 16 mile drive from the ranch. In order to legally sell beef from a custom processor (not State or Federally inspected) it must be sold by the head or the hanging weight. Our retail packaged beef is processed at a Federally inspected facility. Remember, if you want to sell your beef by the cut it must be either State or Federally inspected. If it’s State inspected it must be sold within the State. If it’s Federally inspected you can then legally cross State lines.

Hopefully this explains how a relatively small percentage of the live animal ends up in the retail meat case or your freezer as edible red meat.