Buying a share of beef? See the weight you'll take home and the cut-category breakdown.
Typical beef carcass: 600–900 lb hanging
Half — take-home
67% of your hanging share
251 lb
Half — hanging share
375 lb
Freezer space needed
1 cu ft per 35 lb packaged
7.2 cu ft
Cut category breakdown
Steaks
50 lb
20% · Ribeye, NY strip, tenderloin, sirloin, flat iron
Roasts
75 lb
30% · Chuck, round, rump, tri-tip
Ground beef
101 lb
40% · 1–2 lb packs, typically 80/20 or 85/15
Stew, short ribs, brisket, shanks
25 lb
10% · Stew cubes, bone-in short ribs, brisket, soup bones
Buying a half or quarterof beef is the classic entry point to farm-direct meat. You’re splitting the cost (and the freezer load) with one or three other households and getting every primal — steaks, roasts, ground, and stew — from the same animal.
A typical grass-fed steer hangs at 600–900 lb. A half is roughly 300–450 lb hanging, which becomes about 200–300 lb of wrapped meat in your freezer. A quarter is half of that. Plan for ~1 cubic foot of freezer space per 35 lb.
The breakdown above is the industry-standard split when you let your butcher work a typical “steaks + roasts + ground” cut sheet. If you ask for more ground (common for weeknight cooking) or more steaks (for entertainers), the percentages shift — see Beef Cuts Breakdown for primal-by-primal detail.
Quarter buyers note:a “quarter beef” in the farm world is almost always a split half— you’re sharing a half with one other buyer, and each of you gets half of each cut category. This is different from a true front-quarter or hind-quarter, which contain very different cuts.
your_hanging = whole_hanging × portion_fraction (quarter=0.25, half=0.5, whole=1)
your_takehome = your_hanging × (takehome_% ÷ 100)
cut_category_lbs = your_takehome × category_% (steaks 20%, roasts 30%, ground 40%, stew/brisket 10%)
Beef Cuts Breakdown
What actually comes out of a beef carcass — primal by primal, pound by pound, with the cuts you'll get.
Freezer Capacity
How much meat fits in 7, 15, 20 cubic feet — sized to half beef, whole pig, whole lamb.
Whole Animal True Cost
The $/lb math buyers get wrong — turn any live/hanging/take-home quote into out-the-door cost and compare to grocery retail.