Understanding How Your Meat Makes the Journey

When you purchase meat from a small, pasture-based farm, you are entering a process built on transparency, respect for the animal, and practical realities that differ from grocery-store norms.

That process begins on pasture and ends in your freezer. Along the way, there are three key weights that explain how a living animal becomes the food your family relies on.

Live Weight: Life on the Hoof

The starting point is the live animal—healthy, grazing, and moving on open ground.

This measurement is referred to as live weight. While it provides context for the animal’s size and condition, it is not used for pricing.

Live weight tells the beginning of the story, not the final outcome.

Hanging Weight: From Field to Butcher

After harvest, the animal is respectfully dressed, with non-edible portions removed, and the carcass is hung to age.

This stage is measured as hanging weight.

Typical hanging-weight percentages relative to live weight are:

• Beef: approximately 60–62%

• Pork: approximately 70–72%

• Lamb/Sheep: approximately 50–55%

Hanging weight is used for pricing because it reflects the portion of the animal that will ultimately become food.

Cut Weight: What Ends Up in Your Freezer

After aging, the carcass is cut, trimmed, and packaged.

Cut weight is the final amount of meat you take home—your labeled packages of steaks, roasts, chops, and ground.

Typical cut-weight outcomes are:

• Beef: approximately 37–43% of live weight

• Pork: approximately 49–54% of live weight

• Lamb/Sheep: approximately 33–39% of live weight

These ranges vary slightly based on trimming preferences and processing style, but the biological limits remain consistent.

About Customization: An Important Reality Check

Most meat sold directly from farms is cut into the most commonly used, practical household cuts.

When reserving a whole or half animal in advance, customers may complete a cut sheet to tailor how those cuts are prepared.

Customization affects how cuts are divided—not how many exist.

For example, a whole beef has:

• two tenderloins

• two ribeye sections

• two striploin sections

• a fixed number of roasts, briskets, and usable trim

These quantities are determined by the animal itself.

Customization allows decisions such as:

• more roasts or fewer

• more ground or more stew meat

• bone-in versus boneless

• thicker or thinner steaks

It does not create additional premium cuts.

Why This Matters

Buying meat directly from a farm is not the same as selecting individual cuts from a retail shelf.

It is participation in a transparent food cycle—one that respects the land, the animal, and the people it feeds.

Live weight → Hanging weight → Cut weight

Each step reflects a real, physical process that turns pasture into nourishment.