Freezer Beef

I recently took 2 beautiful Black Angus/Limousine steers to slaughter. I received them as young bulls at about 4 1/2 months old, castrated them at 9 months and slaughtered them at about 17 months old. They were pasture grazed and finished off with free choice of pasture, hay and grain. I have no clue as to their live weight, but their carcass weights were 600 lbs and 585 lbs and I brought home approximately 830 pounds of meat. Does this sound correct for the take home weight?

If carcass weight to take home weight is supposed to be approximately 75%. I am close to that at 70% of the carcass weight.

If live weight is approximately 62% of carcass weight the steers would have only weighed about 950lbs each. This seems low to me as I expected each one to weight about 1400 lbs. What should these 17 month old Black Angus/Limousine steers weigh on the hoof?

I was expecting more take home meat, but since I do not have any prior experience and did not know the live weight I can only guess to whether or not this is within a reasonable range for this type of breed. Did I loose a lot of the live weight due to big bone structure, hide & internals, large head and feet, or did some of my meat wind up in the retail case out front for other customers?

At 17 months of age they should be heavier than 950lb.

getting them at such a young age may of slowed them down a bit.

I usually leave mine with the cow till they are about 6 month old. they should weigh around 500-600 lb give or take at that age.

75% sounds like too much waste. usually it is close to 60%.

I always feel like i dont get all my meat, especially if they sell out front.If you kept the feed to them , then they should of weighed close to your 1400lb guestamation.

Tough to say. Perhaps you can ask around and see other's experiences with the same butcher. I am not familiar with dressout percentages. The butcher we take our animals to(mostly hogs) will run them over a scale before slaughter and give live weight if we ask.

Christopher

I think that " finished" is a term that can be subject to interpretation . I'am not knocking your stock but , it is hard to put on a feed lot type of finish just feeding pasture , hay and a little grain. Animals fed that way will tend to dress out with a lower precetage that those fed on straight corn. Grass fed tend to grow up and not out. Meat from grass fed can be just as tastety, but often have less marbeling and fat.

I dont know about that, I sold a 3 year old grass, hay, NO grain fed herford heifer that weighed 1300# live weight. Only got 60 cents a pound for her, I was told she was to fat...

The steers were a little on the tall side, so maybe they grew up and not out so much. I did not want a lot of fat on them so I feed them a little grain each day, but let the eat plenty of it and sweet feed at the end to get rid of the grass taste. They do taste great. Just wondering about the weights.

Generally speaking, the hot hanging weight will be ~ 60% of the live weight and the retails cuts will be ~ 75% of the hot hanging weight. Your carecasses averaged 592 lbs so my gues is that your 17 month old steers weighed about 1314 lbs on the hoof. That soounds about right for 17 month old cross bred steers.

Without knowing the live weight you'd really only be guessing...
Pasture is also a big word when you're talking about finishing beef. There's a lot of variation there that can have large affects on gain.
I would surmise that with Angus animals, on pasture, at 17 months... you probably got a decent carcass weight.
They probably wouldn't hang at 62% either. That's the high end. 58% might be more average, or the lower side of average.
I'm not really sure on the trim weight. Depends on how much you bone out I guess. Could be right on. Might be lowish tho...
Not much you can do about it now anyway so file it in the memory bank and get your live weights next time.

Rod

If I didn't trust a butcher I wouldn't give him my business.

Oh, I am unsure about the cheated part but it did run through my inexperienced mind.

The carcass weight to take home weight appears correct according to printed literature, just confused about the live weight to carcass weight. I THOUGHT I was pretty accurate at guestimating weight, so I thought it might be the type of breed.

I was also unsure of the pasture vs. the feed lot animal difference, as I raised these for the family dinner table, where as the feed lot animals are raised to gain weight and be put through the market at a profit.

I am just trying to make sense of it all. They do taste mighty good, so maybe that is all that matters, but I would like to do better with my other steers when they go to the butcher.

You could keep them on grass for i6 months , but I would feed full feed for 6 months at least.

Last Angus steer I took hung 702. Got back 413 pounds cut and wrapped,not including organ meat. 207 pounds of it was burger.

We call those Limi-Flex Limousin are naturally lean so they tend to weigh different. Crossed with the Angus is a good match added enough fat to make the meat better but not as much as a Hereford.
Did you that the difference between a black angus and red angus is one gene But you can get 10 cents albs more for them.
I have both red and black Limousin and I get 10 cents more for the black Funny they have the same Papa.
60 cents for a 1300 lb steer is good money around here. We try to sell just under 800 lbs as that is where the price takes a big drop.
Walt

It appears from what information you have given that the amount of meat is about right. Of course there is NO WAY of knowing for sure without a live weight to calculate the numbers with. You may think they weighed 1400 lbs but they may have only weighed 1000 or 1200 lbs. Of course it could be the butcher.

Our regular butcher retired several years ago, so we had to find someone else. I tried one butcher that everyone raved about, I took a 1500 lb steer in. I got 400 lbs of meat back, some of which tasted good, others had the "old" cow taste. Needless to say me and that butcher had some heated words, in which he locked himself in his office, until I left.

Come to find out from a former employee that when they would butcher they would do 5 or 6 at a time and throw all the cuts of meat into a pile and when they would wrap it they would then divide it up. So folks would get some of there steer, some of someone elses and so forth.

The next time around I went to another butcher, small family outfit. Ever since then the amount of meat as been right when calculating it with the live weight.