The butcher kept your meat?
by Dr. Chistopher R. Raines, Assistant Professor
Department of Dairy & Animal Science
The Pennsylvania State University
Department of Dairy & Animal Science
The Pennsylvania State University
No, the butcher probably did not keep your meat. Ever since the first butcher processed a meat animal, the 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? Or that a 250 pound hog generated only 125 pounds of pork? 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 cut and packaged meat, and chances are the math will make more sense.
Step 1: 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) x 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.
70 - 72% Average for Hogs
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60-62% Average for Cattle
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50% Average for sheep
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Step 2: Making cuts out of carcass
This is where it starts to get tricky to predict just how much 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 ground meat will result in more discarded fat, thus reduced total pounds of product received.
We at CCC Ranch, finish calves at the peak of grade without the excess fat.
We at CCC Ranch, finish calves at the peak of grade without the excess fat.
