How Much Does it Cost to Raise Beef for your Freezer?

This year we decided to raise our own beef for our freezer and we are extremely satisfied with the results. We ended up with over 200lbs of high-quality beef and paid much less than we would have if we had purchased this meat from the store. Below is a breakdown of the costs we incurred while raising our beef steer. Our steer had free choice of grass in the pasture and was fed once per day to help build mass. The last two months we kept him in a stall in the barn and fed a mixture of whole corn and feed twice per day to increase marbling in the meat. These costs may or may not hold true for you depending on your location, but we wanted to put them out for reference purposes. As we gain experience we hope to cut our costs even further, but our primary goal is and always will be to grow healthy cattle.

If you haven’t already, watch our previous video where Megan and Ragon talk about why we raised a steer ourselves and what it was like when we dropped the animal off at the butcher.

Our Beef Steer Goes to the Butcher: https://youtu.be/_utyqSTA308

We hope you enjoy this video. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments, and subscribe to our channel so you won’t miss the next video.

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★ Futrell Farms – Cadiz, KY: https://www.facebook.com/futrellfarms

●$750 purchased (June 2020, 575 lbs)
●$654.49 feed and whole corn (thru Feb. 2021)
●$376.50 processed (half)
☆ Total cost (half) = $1078.75

Live weight: 1251 lbs
Hanging/carcass weight: 708 lbs
Approx. weight meat in the freezer (half): 212.4 lbs

★ $1078.75/212.4 lbs = $5.08/lb

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