Two percentages, multiplied
A 1,150 lb steer at a 62 percent dressing yield hangs at 713 lb. Cut that carcass at a 67 percent yield and 477.7 lb of packages come home. That is 41.5 percent of the animal you paid for, not 29 percent, which is what you get by subtracting 38 and 33 from 100 the way people do in their heads. Percentages taken one after the other multiply — 0.62 times 0.67 — and subtracting instead always lands low, by exactly the product of the two losses. Thirty-eight percent of thirty-three percent is 12.5 points, which is precisely the gap between 29 and 41.5.
The same trap bites going backwards. Somebody with 477.7 lb in the freezer wants to know what hung on the rail, adds 33 percent, and gets 635 lb. The real answer is 713, because reversing a 33 percent loss means dividing by 0.67, which is adding 49 percent. A loss percentage and the percentage that undoes it are never the same number, and the further from zero you go the further apart they get.
Where the quote goes wrong
Take the defaults in the form. The animal at 3.25 dollars a hanging pound is 2,317.25 dollars, a flat 110 dollar slaughter fee, cutting and wrapping at 95 cents on all 713 hanging pounds is 677.35, and 85 dollars of smoking and sausage at the bottom of the sheet. That is 3,189.60 dollars delivered.
Spread over 477.7 lb of packages it is 6.677 dollars a pound. The quote said 3.25. The meat costs 2.05 times what the number on the quote said it would, and none of that is anybody being dishonest — the quote is per hanging pound and it says so. It is just that the pound it is quoted against and the pound you eat are two different pounds, and the cutting charge is billed on the bigger of them.
The comparison people get wrong in the other direction
At 7.49 dollars a pound for the store figure in the form, the same 477.7 lb would be 3,578 dollars over the counter, so the animal is 388 dollars ahead. But that 7.49 has to be an honest blend of what you actually buy. A freezer from a whole beef is roughly two fifths ground, and if your household eats ground beef at 5.49 and almost nothing else, the animal loses. Work out your own blended figure from a few months of receipts before deciding this one, because it is the input that decides the answer and it is the one nobody measures.
What the page cannot see
It does not know your animal. Dressing percentage moves with breed, with condition, with how recently the animal ate and with what the plant takes off before weighing — some weigh with the kidney fat in and some do not, and that alone is worth points. Cutting yield moves further still, and the biggest lever on it is your own cut sheet rather than the cutter. Boneless and closely trimmed sends more weight to the bin and less to the freezer; keeping the shanks, the short ribs and the bone-in roasts raises the yield and gives you heavier boxes to deal with.
Get the real numbers by asking the plant what the last few animals of your type dressed and cut at. They have the figures, they are used to being asked, and one honest answer from them is worth more than every rule of thumb on this subject. Then put those in the form instead of the placeholders sitting in it now.
Small animals carry the fee badly
The slaughter fee does not scale. Run the same numbers on a 750 lb animal at the same percentages and the 110 dollars lands on 311.6 lb instead of 477.7, so it adds 35 cents a pound rather than 23. Splitting an animal between households does not change this — the fee is per animal, and it is one of the few arguments for a bigger one that actually holds up in arithmetic rather than in the telling.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between hanging weight and take-home weight?
Hanging weight is the carcass on the rail after slaughter, and it is the weight almost every quote and every cutting charge is written against. Take-home weight is what leaves the shop in packages after the bone, the fat and the trim come off. At the placeholder figures in the form, 713 lb hanging becomes 477.7 lb packaged, so the second number is about two thirds of the first — and the exact fraction depends on your own cut sheet more than on anything else.
Why is my cost per pound so much higher than the price I was quoted?
Because the quote is per hanging pound and the cutting charge is billed per hanging pound too, while you only take home part of that weight. At the figures in the form a 3.25 dollar quote lands at 6.677 dollars for every pound that actually reaches the freezer, which is 2.05 times the quoted number. Add the flat slaughter fee and the per-item extras on the sheet and it moves further.
Can I work backwards from my freezer weight to the hanging weight?
Yes, and the page does it, but divide rather than add. If 477.7 lb came home at a 67 percent cutting yield, the carcass was 477.7 divided by 0.67, which is 713 lb. Adding 33 percent back gives 635 and is wrong by 78 lb. Reversing a percentage loss is always a division, and the two operations diverge more the larger the loss.
What dressing percentage should I use?
Ask your processor for theirs. The field defaults to 62 as a placeholder to replace, not as a fact about cattle. It moves with breed and condition, with gut fill on the day, and with what the plant removes before it weighs the carcass. A figure from the last few animals they handled of your type is worth more than any published range, and they will usually just tell you.
Does a bigger animal cost less per pound?
Per pound, usually a little, and the reason is the flat slaughter fee rather than anything about the meat. That fee is charged per animal, so it lands on more pounds when the animal is bigger. Everything else on the bill scales with weight and cancels out. Run both sizes through the form to see the size of the effect for your own fees rather than assuming it is large.