Taking reservations for April 2024

1/4 -1/2 - whole Grass-Fed Beef starting at $5 per Lbs.

Processed to your specifications, locally and USDA inspected

Our cattle are raised with Care-Transparency-Integrity and Gutierrez Family Farms Values Locally sourced Grass-Fed beef raised in an environment free of stress that simply grazes.
“From our pasture to your plate”

How it works?

We have reserved dates with Greenfields Custom Meats in Meridian.

Our cattle at harvesting weigh 1250-1350 lbs. at 18-24 months of age. All raised and finished on grass pastures (no grain). Cost is calculated based on the hanging weight (50-55% of live weight).

We’ll walk you through the cutting instructions to get the cuts that are perfectly sized for your family and the steps to pick up your meat directly from the processor. Most customers prefer to age beef for 2 weeks, to allow the "natural processes" that improves the flavor and tenderness. If you’d prefer a shorter time, we can make the request based on your needs.

How much freezer space is needed?
1 cubic feet per 35 lbs.  

1/2 Beef we recommend a 10-15 cubic freezer 
Processing Fee’s?

Greenfields Custom Meats will have an additional charge for processing the meat into individual cuts and wrapped per your cutting instructions. See their website for details.

Converting an animal into a carcass

Dressing percentage (DP) relates the weight of the carcass to the weight of the live animal and is calculated as:

(Carcass Weight ÷ Live Weight) × 100.

This can be affected by many things, such as gut fill, fatness, mud on the hide, or shorn versus unshorn.

Very fat animals have higher dressing percentages than light very lean animals.

The average dressing percentage for cattle is about 60-62%.

Example:

Live weight = 1312 lbs. Actual DP = 60% Carcass wt. = 787 lbs.

Expect no more than 65-70% of the carcass weight back as meat.

For boneless, 55-60%.

ESTIMATE cost for a HALF Beef?

Example: Beef total live weight 1312 lbs. to Hanging Carcass weight of 787 lbs. divided in half =393.5 lbs.

Carcass Wt. cost for half is $5.25 x 393.5 lbs. Carcass Hanging Wt. = $2065

Processing Fees for Half: $1.10(393.5 lbs.) = $432.85 + Kill $50.0= $482

ESTIMATED Total cost for ½ Beef with processing fees = $2547

Cost $6.40 per lb. for 1/2 beef based on the hanging carcass, not the take-home weight

Take Home will vary from hanging weight (see the comment below from http://ars.sdstate.edu/MeatSci/May99-1.htm

Making cuts out of a carcass

This is where it starts to get tricky to predict just how much meat the carcass will yield because that depends largely on how you order the meat cut. Bone-in or boneless? Opting for boneless cuts will reduce your total pounds of meat returned. Do you want ground meat with 10% fat or 20% fat? Lower fat content in ground meat will result in more discarded fat, thus reducing the total pounds of the product received. Was the animal overly fat to begin with? If the animal was fat from the start, more fat will need to be trimmed away, thus reducing the total pounds of meat returned.

Aging and further processing

The longer a whole carcass ages (hangs), the more moisture it loses due to evaporation, thus losing weight. The typical Age time for GFF beef is 10-14 days but as a customer, you can choose the length of time your beef hangs.

The butcher kept your meat?

No, the butcher probably did not keep your meat. Ever since the first butcher processed meat animals, customer has wondered what happened to some of their meat. How could it be that a 1,200-pound steer left you with only 475 pounds of beef? What might seem like a reasonable answer - that the butcher kept your meat - is very unlikely. Take into consideration what happens during the conversion of a market animal into the cut and packaged meat, and chances are the math will make more sense. This brief guide is intended to serve as a general base for meat product return and may not fully account for slight variations that different animals and butcher orders may incur (Wulf, 1999).

Adapted from: “The Butcher Stole My Meat” by D.M. Wulf (1999).

http://ars.sdstate.edu/MeatSci/May99-1.htm