If you own and operate a small farm, you probably want to know exactly where the animals you’re raising are going to end up. You want to ensure you’re getting the most bang for your buck when it comes time for processing, while also taking into consideration factors like cuts, USDA certifications, and facility cleanliness.
Where do you get started when it comes to finding a meat processing partner you know you can count on?
At This Old Farm, a meat processor, distributor, and marketer since 2009, we’ve had years to determine pricing for our customers.
In this article, we’re going to break down what impacts the cost of cuts of meat when you bring it in for processing. By the end of the article, you’ll have a better understanding of how much it costs to process different types and cuts of meat, as well as the factors that impact the price.
The factors we’ll be covering in the article are:
- The type of animal
- The size of the animal
- The cut of the meat
- The animal’s diet
- Discounts and more
The five key things that factor into the processing price of meat
1. The type of animal being processed
The first and most important thing that factors into the processing price is the type of animal you’re bringing in. This can be anything from cows, pigs, lambs, and goats.
We’ll start out with beef.
A beef animal is much, much larger than a hog or a lamb, and at This Old Farm we give our estimates based on a few different variables.
The first is the animal’s live weight, which a farmer might be able to estimate just by looking at the animal, but can sometimes be difficult to tell just by the naked eye.
The cost of processing an animal is based on hanging weight rather than live weight, and the hanging weight for beef is often between 58 and 62% of the live weight, so it’s easy for the farmer to estimate. With that hanging weight, beef comes to about $0.96 per pound.
Pork, on the other hand, is roughly 70% of its live weight. So, when you’re estimating hogs, the average price range at This Old Farm is between $1.05 per pound of the carcass live weight, based on the cuts you choose.
Finally, a lamb is the smallest and most expensive animal to process. Why? Because they are the lowest yielding livestock, while taking the same amount of resources to process. Lambs weigh in at about 100 pounds, and their hanging weight is only 50% of its live weight, which brings a pound of lamb to between $2.42 per pound.
The next factor that can impact the processing price is the size of the animal you’re bringing in. We’ll dive into that next.
2. The size of the animal
Of course, it may seem like common sense, but the bigger the animal, the more it’s going to cost.
On average, a hog can run anywhere from 275 to 300 pounds. The average beef can depend on whether it’s a dairy or beef breed, but they can be anywhere from 1,150 to 2,000 pounds, though depending on the time of the year, there have been dairy breeds as high as 1,800 pounds.
Naturally, these bigger animals are going to be substantially more expensive to have processed, because the size is the biggest determining factor.
3. The cut of the meat
The next factor when it comes to estimating the price of processing meat is the type of cut you’re looking for.
If, for example, you have a cow weighing in at around 1,150 pounds, you can plan to budget roughly $800 for that beef if you select standard cuts.
However, at This Old Farm, as well as other processors, there are a myriad of other ways to cut the meat, like seaming out the chucks, making it as inexpensive or as expensive as you’d like. If you stay within the standard cut range, you can plan to stay within that average, $800 processing range.
However, as you get into more specialty items, the price is going to increase.
These specialty cuts can include:
- Beef bacon
- Hotdogs
- Summer sausage
- Seasoned sausage
- Breakfast patties
- Bratwurst
- Ham (cured, smoked, etc.)
- Pork chops
- Delmonico steaks
Because the items listed above take more time and resources to process, they also come with substantially higher retail value.
Take ham, for example. To cure a cut of ham coming from even a 300 pound, live weight hog, it can cost up to $2.50 per pound, more than doubling the processing price for a standard hog.
We can also compare the price of Delmonico steaks to that of the standard “chuck” beef cuts. Delmonico steaks cost around $170 more to process because they’re specialty cuts, and require much more time to process. To procure the Delmonico steak, the customer will also receive the Denver, Flat Iron, Petite Tender, Sierra, and Ranch cuts included in that price.
These costs and cuts all depend on what the farmer is looking for.
Other contributing factors include the animal’s diet. We’ll get into how diet impacts the processing costs next.
4. The animal’s diet
Most of the commodity beef on the market is raised on concrete and fed a diet of balanced grain. And while grain isn’t harmful or bad for the animal, it is inexpensive.
The farmers that raise their animals on grass, and feed them grass alone bring a premium value to their beef. This means that the farmers coming to a processor with a 100% grass-fed animal is going to want only the meat from their animal back.
For many facilities, this is not possible, as animals are halved and combined to save time and resources.
However, This Old Farm is a 100% traceable facility. This means the animal is going to be divided and given a barcode that ensures that the farmer gets only his 100% grass-fed beef back. This also gives the facility the ability to make the label claim of 100% grass-fed, which increases the price.
However, the increase in price is often worth it to these farmers, because they can charge more for it, because it’s harder to find.
At the end of the day, even though a farmer is saving money by not feeding their livestock grain, it is still costing them more in day to day interaction with their animals. Why? Because they have to rotate it to fresh grass more often, making it more labor intensive. Additionally, a grain-fed cow can be raised in 14 months, while a grass-fed cow takes 30 months, costing that farmer more in not just resources and labor, but time as well.
5. Discounts and more
While This Old Farm offers a variety of ways to make a farmer’s meat as expensive as they’d like, there are also wants to bring down the prices as well.
How? Loyalty discounts are a popular way to bring down the price. This means that if you if you are bringing enough animals in on a yearly basis, we can offer a discount, bringing down the cost of labor and making it more economical for the farmer in the long run. For more information on our Letter of Intent program, you can look over our Letter of Intent Document, below, or email us at sales@thisoldfarminc.com.
This Old Farm is committed to processing your livestock quickly and humanely. Whether you’re selling by the half, whole, or cut, we know that can meet your needs. We have over 10 years of experience, and our 10,000 sq/ft. facility is USDA inspected.
We’d love to offer you a processing consultation to see how we can work together.
