A guide to buying custom meats
With the rising cost of groceries you might be contemplating if there is a more economical way to source your meats and the answer is yes there is…if you have freezer space and a hookup with a local farm.
Custom meats, custom butchering, freezer beef, sides, quarters, whole hog, and half hog all refer to purchasing your meat in bulk through a local farm. Usually this means you get to choose how you want your meats cuts and processed as well. I’ve been receiving a lot of email inquiring about how to do this, many from folks who haven’t tried it before so I’m going to lay it out for you here and break down what can honestly be a confusing or intimidating process.
At New Roots Farm we sell most of our product through the Meat CSA or by individual retail packages in the farm store, but we also offer bulk purchasing through our custom pork, beef and lamb offerings. Custom meats are great because it allows you to purchase meats in bulk at a discounted rate while choosing your cuts, flavors, and packaging. You can choose to get what you like to eat and cook so you’re less likely to waste product or pay for something you aren’t going to use. Are you sold yet? Great, but before you commit lets walk through a few important questions and details to make sure custom meats makes sense for your family.
What do you want? Custom meats will give you a blend of family friendly or budget cuts like roasts, ground meats, sausage AND premium cuts like tenderloins, steaks, pork chops and bacon at a much lower average price than you’d pay if you bought them individually. Custom meats are great because you have choice in cuts, but not necessarily a great fit if what you will get back doesn’t align with your dining habits. For example, if you just want lots of bacon you probably shouldn’t get custom pork because each pig only has around 15 pounds of bacon. Bacon is just the belly of the pig and there is far more to a pig than belly. On the cow side of things if you don’t like to cook ground beef custom is probably not for you because half of the cow is going to come back as ground.
When do you want it? Custom meats are definitely an “early bird gets the worm” situation. Farmers make their butcher appointments far in advance—we are booked out through 2024 because our butcher is so busy. We are balancing appointment availability, when the animals will actually be ready, and retail/CSA demand with our custom meat appointments. This balancing act means we allot a certain amount of animals for custom appointments on a predetermined schedule and when folks snag those spots we can’t easily add more. Many farmers sell out their custom spots well in advance. We do pigs on a rolling basis throughout the year, but when the farm operation was smaller we only offered them in the fall and they sold out every spring. If you want custom meats be prepared to put down your deposit months or even a year in advance and make sure you’re on the wait list, email lists, or however your chosen farm notifies people. Custom beef isn’t Taylor Swift tickets, but farms definitely sell out quickly. And yes you should be prepared to put down a non-refundable deposit when you make your reservation because farmers make pretty firm plans around your custom orders. This deposit gets taken off your final bill.
How is the cost determined? How your final bill gets handled may vary from farm to farm. Some farms include processing in your bill while others have you pay the butcher directly. At New Roots Farm our custom meat price includes processing and delivery to your home (within our service area) or transport back to the farm for you to pick up because we want the process of purchasing custom meats to be a simple as possible for our customers. Most farms charge by weight while some have a flat fee. When you’re talking about weights there are three to be concerned with: live weight, hanging weight, and cut weight. The animal can be weighed three times throughout processing. When it first arrives, it is ushered onto a large scale and the weight is read from a digital readout and documented on the receiving form. This is called the “live weight”. Not every butcher has a scale and you may never know the live weight of your animal—a live weight may never be documented on any forms and you shouldn’t necessarily expect it.
Hanging weight: Once the first step of processing takes place the animal has been slaughtered, hide and organs removed and the head. The carcass now hangs “on the rail” and this weight it called the hanging weight. This is the weight that most farms charge based upon and how butchers do their billing. At New Roots we charge by hanging weight and the hanging weight is documented on each cut sheet. On average hanging weights are around 60-65% of the live weight.
Cut weight: Once the carcass has been aged it can be cut. There is some loss of weight due to moisture loss in the aging process. More loss of weight occurs as meat is cut, bones removed etc. This is your final yield and some farms charge by the final cut volume. The weight of the final product is usually less than half the live weight of the animal when it’s all said and done.
Pro Tips on maximizing your yield and getting the most bang for your buck: As a customer, you are welcome to take everything that the USDA will allow you take according to custom exempt or USDA resale regulations. This often includes everything but certain organs and potentially not the spinal column if the cow is over 30 months. Also, you'll want to make sure you're not cutting your steaks too thin or requiring too much packaging. If you want more pork chops or steaks having them cut extra thick will reduce the total number you get back. Asking for bone in cuts minimizes waste. Even if you prefer mostly boneless items, you can ask to save your bones in separate packages for use in making broth/stock. If you bought a cow you can get your suet back to render and make tallow. If it's a pig, ask for the kidney fat - this is the clean, creamy fat that is used to make lard. Experiment with offal - there are lots of people who enjoy things like sweetbreads, head cheese and pig's ears, and with the right cooking treatment you might too. Beef bones make excellent pho broth, pig feet and hocks make excellent tamales or additions to beans, and tails make for delicious cooking adventures.
Where will you store it? Custom meats take up a good amount of space and you’re going to want to think about storage sooner rather than later. If you’re very good a meat Tetris you can get half a hog in a standard residential fridge’s top freezer, but there isn’t going to be room for much else. If you don’t have a ton of freezer space custom lamb is a nice entry into custom meats because they are much smaller and the cuts are little. Those cute little lamb chops will be right at home in your regular freezer. If you’re getting half a cow or a whole cow you are going to need A LOT of room. A chest or upright freezer in the garage or basement is a solid investment if you want to get custom meats every year. Plan for around one cubic foot of space per 35 lbs of meat. A whole cow or pig represents a significant financial investment so investing in a freezer alarm that will let you know if the freezer stops is advisable. If you have a power outage and a catastrophic loss your meats may be covered under your renters or homeowners insurance depending upon your policy.
How will you get it? If you’re working with a farm that has you pay the butcher directly you might also be in charge of getting the butcher your cutting instructions aka your “cut sheet”. If you have to fill our your own cut sheet or get your order to the butcher make sure you have a copy of that in advance, know when your animal is being dropped off, and when the butcher needs your instructions. Because we are a full service shop we take your order and translate it to the cut sheet so you don’t have to worry about it. Every butcher has a different cut sheet and you learn the lingo, but it takes time. If your order doesn’t include delivery or farm pickup you will want several coolers for your butcher road trip. Most plants freeze the meats right after cutting so they are very fresh and very cold, but it doesn’t hurt to confirm this so you can plan accordingly. Some plants will give you the product in boxes while others will bring it to you in crates you unload and give back to them. Again, ask in advance and plan accordingly.
How much does it cost? There are sooooo many variables this is a tough question to answer, but your farmer should be able to give you a rough estimate. Our hogs tend to hang around 95 lbs per side and our cows around 550 lbs, but there is some variance.
Here is a sample beef breakdown for you:
Our cows are averaging 1000 to 1100 pounds finished weight. You ask for a nice variety of boneless and bone-in cuts, and ground beef. Your yield may reasonably be:
1000lbs x .55 percent average yield = 550lbs hanging weight, this is the weight we use to determine your bill, 550lbs x $6/lbs = $3,300
550lbs x .66 percent average yield = 363 lb. cut weight, this is the amount you take home and what you get will depend upon how you have the animal cut.
$3,025 ÷ 363lbs = $9.09 per pound, this is the effective cost of how much your take home meat is. On average our custom beef ends up being 9 to 11 dollars per pound averaged across everything you get back.
As you can see, the take home weight is less than half of the original weight of the animal. Ground beef could easily make up around 50% of that weight.
How will it be packaged? This will vary by farm and processor. Our product comes in plastic vacuum packages and ground meats come in tubes. Everything comes back frozen and the cuts are labeled. All our custom meats are processed under USDA inspection and the packages have the USDA inspected stamp on them. Some farms work with butchers that process under custom exemption so the meats may be labeled “not for retail sale” and won’t have the USDA inspection sticker.
Does all this sound good? I hope so! Custom meats can be a really great way to stock your freezer, save some money, and support your local farmers. I enjoy our custom meat customers very much—I don’t get to see them as often, but its fun to see their kids grow, hear about the big changes in their lives, and give them an update on how much has changed at the farm since their last restock.