How much for a Whole Cow // Is it worth it // Local Farm Raised Beef #beef #homesteading #localfood

hey guys welcome back this is grain free Homestead I'm Derek I'm Stephanie today we're going to be talking about going and getting a whole beef a few months back we did a video on getting a whole uh a hog and today we're getting a whole beef uh before you even think about getting a whole beef there's some things you might want to consider um is do would you even use a whole beef is it something that is going to make sense for you and your family for our family we eat a lot of beef and we like certain kinds of beef um a lot and we can't hardly afford them at the grocery store but getting a whole beef buying in bulk it gives us a lot more options it makes it possible for us to have you know prime rib flavment yawn stuff that we couldn't afford if we were just buying at the store even roasts and you know ribeye steaks and T-Bones I mean let's face it they're crazy expensive for you know a larger family hard to to get all the time and to be able to you also want to consider too do you have the space for a hole or a half or even a quarter of any kind of bulk meat and you'll have to go over you know we'll kind of try and give you an idea of how much space it takes up in our freezers but you will you will need to have a lot of room in a freezer to be able to hold it all because a whole beef is like a big stand-up freezer that you'll need just for one for maybe not anything that might just need more than that don't you so if it's a large stand-up freezer you might be able to fit a hotel in it or one of those big large chest freezers like this way one of the larger ones um that might work too we we have the like the half size freezer chest so it takes you know it takes two for us so you're talking hundreds of pounds of meat that you're gonna need to store in a freezer so if you don't have the space it may not be an option for you it may not be something that you can do but it was is kind of cool about a lot of these places is let's just say you just want a few steaks or you want to try it out they they do sell individual Stakes most places that sell beef like a whole beef and a bowl they will sell parted out into and they even have smaller like baskets and stuff like that yeah you can do a quarter a half or a whole cow um or then they have like smaller packages you know that they put together that that you can also do as well um so the main thing that we have to do before we go today we've been working on it for a little bit is get our freezers cleaned out and organized so I like to have you know a whole freezer just for the beef and then we have to get coolers together some places will provide coolers for you or styrofoam coolers that sort of thing um but we like to take our own cooler so that we don't we're not using up their coolers or so that we don't have to take them back that thing kind of thing so it depends on the farmer on that now I do want to tell you so today we're picking up a whole cow and we're going to show you all what a whole cow looks like like in our dining room but we actually split that with a friend so us personally as a family we are keeping half of a cow and so our freezer space will pretty much only allow for a half a cow and a half a cow is working pretty good for our family per year if we're short we're just short like a little bit of hamburger or something like that as far as steaks it's working for us now the reason that we do that one we wanted to show you all what a whole cow was two we like to split it with a friend and the reason we do that is it is cheaper to buy a whole cow split it and what we want which and you'll see us doing in the video we divvy everything out by cut and then we split it evenly you don't have to do that but we are kind of Penny Pinchers I'll just be honest and it's it saves 150 or something around there per person to split it ourselves instead of buying it by the half and it's a lot of work it's something that we're willing to do and where can I kind of show you you know you're going to see what all we had to kind of do to split it up and you can decide is it worth that or isn't it um you know it's kind of fun to us you know we have a little bit of fun with it and we like to see all the meat it makes us it makes him happy so I just did I want to tell you that ahead of time we will show you the whole cow I would like to get totals as far as you know how much weight we got you know how many T-Bones how many Ribeyes how many rows we want to give all that to you at the end of this video and then we'll give you how much that how much do you know that this cost us and how much that comes out to per pound there's some other issues too that you'll need to talk to with if your personal butcher or Farm whatever you go to is how you customize the cuts of meat there's a lot of different ways to do it and there's a lot of different it's like we needed more more hamburger from last year so we had extra roast from last year so this year what we did is that we ground up more of the roast into hamburger so that because we use more hamburger so depending on your family and your preference and the things you like the thickness of your steak yeah all that stuff matters um and you can talk to your farmer and your butcher or however they do it and you can figure all that kind of stuff out because it's different for every person and every family like we get the organ Meats bones we get the Tallow we try to use every part of any animal that we get just to be economical but also be respectful of that animal and then to just we kind of believe and use what you got so um you know Tallow you kind of have to ask for it they don't mind to give it to you at all you just have to ask for it most butchers throw that stuff away they don't even think anybody wants it but she just made a video on how to make soap out of the Tallow yep and it makes wonderful soap and you know it makes great gifts that sort of thing so we just like to use what's available to us so all those things are kind of involved in a cow and you can personalize it with the you know the farm or the butcher that you go to they usually have a sheet I'll put a you know I can put a picture and you get to pick or talk to your farmer how thick you want your steaks how much hamburger which roast do you want like I like the shoulder and Chuck roasts the bottom roast I don't like as much because they're you know they're tougher so we have that ground into ground beef we're a larger family and we eat a lot of ground beef and there's some Cuts depending on what you get if you get a a quarter of a cow there might be cuts that you don't get so you have to kind of figure out you know what do you want what do you need and customize it to your needs and wants and and talk to your farmer and butcher about it and they'll help you figure all that stuff so we just want to take you guys along with us um kind of show you what it's like even at the farm and because it's going to be similar to a lot of places you know so we just wanted to give you guys an opportunity to come with us see it see the meat see how much a whole cow like how much meat is it sitting on our kitchen table kind of deal so we want you guys to come along with us and we're going to show you how we do it we're here thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign guys you saw all that meat we just sorted through you could see how much meat there was there was a the whole cow and the half cow you saw a lot of the different variety of steaks the beef the cut the rib eyes all the different cuts of meat that we got and you can kind of get an ideal of just the amount of meat that is by looking at those pictures and the video there and it's going to take you I think we figured it up about four we have two like half freezers and they're like a seven cubic square feet freezer freezer so we have two of those and it was pretty much for a half of the beef that we got it it feels like as you can see all that beef and you'd see how how much it was and it's gonna take fun in it it's gonna take you about 14 cubic square feet of freezer space to fit a half of a beef and that all too depends on the type of cow there's different kinds of cows some you know if you are processing a cow that was for milking most of all that energy goes into milk so you're gonna not have nearly as much meat on it and there's different varieties of cows some cows have bigger bones so depending on Stephanie's getting ready to go over all the numbers and all the weight and the types of you know the different things that we got out of this this cow that we process okay are you guys ready so first I'm gonna go over the cuts that we got and how like how much or how many packs of each cut and this is for the whole cow not the half so everything I get you you'll want a half okay all right so we're gonna start with brisket um we got six briskets it was about 24 pounds of brisket we've got uh 92 one pound rolls of ground hamburger we've got 16 packs of short ribs that was about 35 pounds uh three packs of filet mignon we got seven Chuck roasts seven shoulder roasts and remember I had all the other roasts the bottom roast and round roast I had those ground into hamburger we got 96 one pound packs of hamburger patties so they're already pattied out um and those are nice you can you can if they're Patty you can just make hamburgers out of them but if if you wanted to do something else with them yeah so if I run out of hamburger rolls on those I'll just lay those out and use the you know there's no additives or fillers or anything so if I need taco meat or whatever I'll just lay out a couple of those if I run out of hamburger rolls okay so there was 24 packs of sirloin and the sirloin comes in a single pack it's one steak and it's humongous so that was 46 and a half pounds or so of the sirloin but it's 24 packs uh 13 packs of T-Bones 17 packs of rib eyes now those are doubled so there's two in each in each pack set let's see 17 rib eyes there is 10 packs of New York strips eight things we get the tenderized round steak you do get to pick that depending on on what you want and there was two of the flat iron steaks or flank steak and there was five packs of the stew meat so if I wanted to buy all that at a grocery store it would it's just not even financially feasible for us to do it so if you're wanting all those kind of cuts meet this this is the best for us and probably for you this is the best way to buy bulk meat is to buy a whole beef and you're going to be able to get that kind of selection versus just going and buying you know one or two steaks of pain fourteen dollars a pound for for some of that so now I'm gonna give you all the weights of the cow how much we got that sort of thing so all the numbers that I gave you were for the whole cow in total so the actual meat that we brought home that's packaged and ready to eat that weighed 421 pounds so that was like the bring home meat that's going into our freezer all right so but I'm gonna give you like the live weight and the hanging weight just to give you an idea in case you know it can vary depending on the cow depending on the type of cow so this just helps give you like if you wanted to average it out and get percentages of what to expect to come home to your freezer so the live weight of our cow was 13.25 1 325 pounds the hanging weight so after they take off the hide and the blood and things like that Hooves I think the hanging weight is 794 pounds so usually they lose about half of the weight from live weight yeah you should bring home a little more than half to 60 is what you should bring home to go into your freezer it just that again depends on the breed of that's from hanging weight 60 from hanging weight right 60 from hanging weight around there you know 55 60 sometimes more 65 it just depends there's a little bit of wiggle room in there it kind of depends on your butcher how talented they are okay so now I'm going to give you um we got things that weren't included in that weight so I did not include me in the 421 pounds that we brought from that whole cow we did not include these things in that weight so these are extra I guess if you want to call them we do not pay extra they're included I just didn't include them in the weight and that was all our suit bones we had 10 packs of soup bones and that included um a few packs of oxtail um we had about six packs of liver um we got the heart which they can do a whole heart or they can slice it like a steak that just depends um on what you want we've had it both ways this time it accidentally came as a whole heart it looks really cool and I'll let him deal with that um so some here's some of the options too some of the things so like the soup bones you can make like beef broth because she'll make like a broth I'll make beef broth and can it uh the livers she'll she'll have beef liver she loves beef liver that's meals that we're getting out of um the heart I don't really you know there's a few options I'm probably gonna make dog treats or something with the heart I know some people just you know they don't want to fool that I'm just saying we're using everything we can and we're just trying to to make it go as far as we can and then there's what the time we know the tongue the tongue get the tongue I know that is um I have a hard time dealing with it too but my grandma used to do it all the time she would cook it like a roast but I've been watching a lot of videos and you know I think that we're gonna try like um it's really good in tacos tacos and fajitas and stuff there's a lot of really good recipes out there and we're gonna give it a try so before you get grossed out and say this is a horrible they're eating cow tone if you've ever eaten Taco Bell UV encounter just just a heads up yeah or who knows that's probably the best thing in Taco Bell that you've eaten is so you've eaten it whether you realize it or not yeah okay so and then the last thing that we got was the beef Tallow I asked for the Tallow and I she asked how much do you want I guess because there's a lot in there so I got about 20 plus pounds of Tallow and that's in the freezer right now but I will render that down at some point and make more soap out of it um I do have a video on that if you want to check it out so this is what we paid we're down to down to the uh main meat that you're going to be eating on a regular basis yeah so all those extra things the bones livers Hollow heart tongue that I did not include that because I realized a lot of people aren't going to use that that's just bonus for us that's yeah that's just bonus for us so what we paid okay for the whole cow was three thousand dollars um now again you'll see in the video um that there was three tables full of meat and then at the very end there was our dining room table full of me that was after we separated it out with our friend so um the whole callus 3000 so we only paid 1500 yeah we split with our friends so that's fifteen hundred dollars for that whole table of food and what that came out to be was about seven dollars and ten cents a pound for everything we averaged everything together so the hamburger the roast the the New York strips the filet mignon everything is seven dollars and ten cents a pound and so we can't do that I mean our hamburger in the stores is seven dollars and if we're gonna buy organic grass-fed hamburger it's going to be more than that and I do realize that some of you guys are like hey I can beat that price or I'm that that's great if you can that's awesome please do it I'm and I'd like to see some of your all stones I do know some of you all butcher your own animals so you don't have to pay the butcher or and some of you all have like your own feed you grow your own you know just there's different ways that you can save money and be creative do do what's best for you and your family and figure out ways to do it and I mean we're trying to do different things but right now where we are we we don't have the space for Animals I'm not a butcher so we have to pay people for you know processing and on those things and we want to get to a place where we don't have to do all that stuff or we know we know we're able to to figure out a way to save money doing it but right now this is how the best way for our family to do it and hopefully this is this and we're supporting another family yeah you know they're a small business this is what they do they're good at it and it's good it's the highest quality that we can get and so it's a win-win we're supporting them and we're getting a very high quality you know product in return and I'm a whole lot happier supporting a local family that's a farm family that uh then then paying a lot of money to a grocery chain or some big Corporation or company that's making not so good food yeah and you know you know the cows the beefs are happy cows you know they lived a good life and we see them we see them out in the fields and they're grazing and you know the cow that's that we get at the store I feel sorry for them that the life that they lived and and you know what they had to go through so you know that's just a small part of it but it is part of it and like he said we're not in a place where we can raise larger livestock I mean we we have our chickens and we have our meat birds but where we're at right now that's all we can do so this is our alternative you know we want to we support them we buy our hog there and our cow there and um you know and I know we're not the only ones out there you know we have the desire and the heart but you know we all know how real estate is right now and it's very hard to get you know into some land and be able to do that so this is this is where we're at and we want to share that with you guys so that it can be an option for you maybe you've never thought about it or maybe you don't live in a farm community but just you know 10 minutes down the road or 15 minutes down the road you might be able to to you know strike a relationship with a local farmer there and I will tell you all that say say you don't have a freezer space or you don't have the ability to get a whole or a half a cow just going out and supporting a small farm it's a it's a it changes their life I mean you can go to Walmart you can go to the local groceries and buy products from there and support these big corporations or or you can just go and support your local community and that really affects your local supply chain to you know you you have the ability to get food from a neighbor and it creates a bond in relationships you're not really going to ever have no relationship with the CEO of Walmart or any of the people I mean you might at the deli you might meet somebody every once in a while but I'm just saying on a personal relationship but I you know we drive and Past Farms and we know the people at those farms and they're good people and it's good to have that community so it's just a another way that you can go out and support your local community even if you're just buying a you know five or six rows of hamburger ground hamburger and a couple steaks yeah it's it still supports that local local and while while we're talking about them we're going to put a plug in for them it's called the farmer's wife they're in Shepherdsville south of Louisville yeah in Kentucky so they have a website I believe it's just a farmer's wife yeah they're on Facebook yeah and you can see in the video they have other stuff there they carry a local dairy farms milk and chocolate milk they have eggs they have fresh produce from around here your produce that they grow Amish produce they had honey maple syrup lots of fresh produce all kinds of other jams and jellies that sort of thing okay guys that was our cow day um so it's a lot of work but it's a lot of fun um and it's rewarding um to have our freezers full thanks for coming along I hope that this video benefits you guys that you learn something from it or maybe it encourages you to go look for a local farmer or to maybe try something different to stock your pantry to you know feed your family so guys if you've enjoyed this please give us a thumbs up or a like if you haven't subscribed Please Subscribe we would love to have you if you really want to help support our channel of subscribing sharing all that stuff it really does help get the algorithm going so if you wanna if you want to support us that's how you do it we appreciate it yep you guys have a great week and we'll see you on the next one God bless

Channel: Grain Free Homestead

Views: 749,582

Keywords: Local farm, Grain free homestead, Beef, Grass fed beef, Support local, Carnivore

Id: Q9b5UabGSxI

Length: 29min 41sec (1781 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022