T.T.: Buying a Steer for the Freezer

We've been buying whole animals from farmers and ranchers for our freezer for many years now. Every place we have lived in the last fifteen years, we've found someone who will sell us a whole cow or steer (or, more rarely, a pig) and bring it to the processor for us.

This is getting more common, but it's not exactly the sort of thing you might learn in your average high school class. So I thought I would tell you how it works. With the caveat that this is how it works for us. In a more urban area, you might not be able to deal so directly with the person who raises the animal. I don't know. But here's what happens for me.

First, figure out what you want to buy. We have most commonly done this with cull cows (the cows that have had trouble calving or raising a calf and are going to auction anyway) or steers (a steer is a castrated male). That is, as you probably know, a very big animal. They do vary quite a bit in size, but generally speaking, if you want a whole animal, you need at least one chest freezer. We've had cows small enough that the entirety of the meat going in the freezer is only about 200 pounds. The last steer we got, though, was about 700 pounds. That's a LOT of meat, and it takes a lot of space.

We did have some frozen vegetables and things in one freezer, but this steer took up at least 3/4 of the space in two very large chest freezers.

So decide if you have the room for it yourself or if you need to find other people to share the meat with.

Next, you need to find the animal. 

Where we live in beef cattle country, that pretty much just means asking our neighbors if they have a steer or cull cow we could buy from them. One of them always does. 

Future freezer meat, just 50 yards from our door.

Before we lived here, we used to look in our local free advertisement newspaper--the ones that are often on stands at grocery stores in rural areas--or on Craigslist to find someone selling whole animals.

The way it has always worked for us is that we are buying the animal, but the farmer or rancher brings it to the processor for us. In that way, we don't have worry about proving transfer of ownership with a brand inspection or anything. And we also don't have to transport it. We don't have a cattle trailer, anyway.

So once our rancher agrees to sell us the animal, I call a meat processor to find out when it can be taken in for slaughter. This has gotten a lot more difficult in the past couple of years as more people are turning to small meat processing places to get meat. The place we used to use a couple of hours away is now scheduling slaughter out a year and a half from now. 

That's crazy.

Luckily, a new place opened about an hour and a half from us, and they got this last steer in within a few weeks of my calling. When I called, they took my name and phone number, as well as the name of the rancher who was delivering the steer. They told me when he should bring it, and I duly passed that information on to our rancher neighbor. 

Whenever we've bought an animal for processing, dealing with the processor is entirely my responsibility. All the farmer or rancher should be doing is dropping the animal off.

The animal is slaughtered the day it's delivered, but with beef, it has to hang and age in a cooler for some time. I always ask that it hang at least two weeks. For a bigger animal, three weeks is really better. That does require the processor to hold the animal in valuable storage space for longer, so not all of them want to do that, but they should definitely not try to cut it up any sooner than ten days after slaughter. The meat needs the time to age. It makes for better texture and flavor.

Sometime before the aging period is done, the processor will call to get cutting instructions. Every processor I have ever used has what's called a "cut sheet." It's just a list of the various cuts that can be taken from different parts of the animal. They will go down this list with me over the phone and ask my preferences.

So, for instance, some of the cuts can be made into roasts, or stew meat, or ground beef. Some of the cuts that can be roasts can also be cut into steaks. 

They will also ask how many pounds of meat should be in each package of things like ground beef and stew meat. Also how thick to cut the steaks and how many to a package. This new processor asked me if I wanted the meat vacuum sealed, or just wrapped in plastic wrap and butcher paper (I went with the latter, because it's less plastic overall), but that's the first time I've ever been given an option for packaging.

In addition, I have the option of getting the offal--heart, liver, kidneys, etc.--the oxtail and soup bones, and any additional fat. I get all of that, because the dogs will eat what I don't cook. If you don't have the space or just don't want to deal with offal, you can say no. If you do want the fat for rendering into tallow, you can usually ask them to grind it for you, which makes it much easier to render.

The person you're talking to is going to be very knowledgeable about the different cuts of meat and your options, so don't be afraid to ask what they recommend or what most people ask for.

This is the time to ask what the live weight of the animal was. The processor will weigh it before slaughter. That's the live weight, and that's how the farmer or rancher will calculate how much you owe them. We calculate it ourselves for our neighbors, using the price at our local auction per hundredweight for that particular kind of animal on that day. A cull cow, for instance, brings less at auction than a steer. Prices are pretty high right now for all kinds of animals, but our cost to our rancher this time was still less than two dollars per pound.

However, given that the steer we got from him was a bit over 1,300 pounds live weight, that's still a pretty hefty check to write up front. And that doesn't include the processing.

I pay the processor directly when I pick the meat. They charge a price per pound based on what's called the hanging weight. That's the weight of the carcass after it's been gutted. 

Taking both costs together, the price per pound for the meat we actually brought home came out to a bit less than four dollars per pound, which is the most we've ever had to pay. That may sound like a lot for something like ground beef, but keep in mind that that's what you're paying for filet mignon and porterhouse steaks, too. Even at these higher prices, it averages out to less than grocery store meat, and of course it's a much, much higher quality.

This is what 700 pounds of beef looks like when it's in boxes.

Having a truck is useful for transport purposes, because those boxes take up a lot of space.

Again, this was a particularly large steer, so this is more meat than we would normally get.

And now all that remains is to eat it. Without worrying about running out for a loooong time.