How much freezer space does a Dexter take?
Nov 17, 2015 11:07:08 GMT -5
Olga, arlen, and 2 more like this
Post by zephyrhillsusan on Nov 17, 2015 11:07:08 GMT -5
This question has been asked before, so I thought I'd take some photos to share. We have a large chest freezer in the hay barn. Before we picked up our beef, I emptied it except for a box of bones (which you can see in the right front corner). First I'll share the butchering stats to give a reference to how the beef fills the freezer.
This is a July 1, 2013 steer we bought from freedomfarms in late September, 2013. (You named him Ronny, freedomfarms, although we called him Sir Loin. He was a sweet guy, and we had to condition ourselves for the hard day we knew was coming.) Sir Loin was an escape artist who loved to be in our back pasture where the pond was, even abandoning his herd mates to get there, so he didn't have any special pasture. He got our regular high-copper minerals, and last winter he had access to a protein tub with the others, along with grass hay. He escaped the pasture with the handy loading chute the day before we were going to load him, and he came up to the house. I wasn't sure if he was trying to make me feel relieved to be almost done with his escapades or if he was trying to make a last plea to be a house pet! Whatever his reason, he followed me through a nearby gate without even a bucket to tempt him, which made me feel more guilty and made loading him more stressful than I had wanted.
We took him to be butchered on Oct. 28 of this year when he was a few days shy of 28 months old. Since our butcher was willing, we kept him on pasture until we loaded him, so he had a full belly. The butcher offered to come out to our trailer to spare him the stress of being moved into the pen. The butcher was quite complimentary and said he was a really nice steer and made really good beef.
Here are the stats:
Live weight - 720 lbs.
Hanging weight (hot carcass) - 425 lbs.
Total package weight (after 2 full weeks hanging time) - 262.4 lbs. plus 23.2 lbs. of bones
Dressing percentage - 59.03%
Packaged weight - 36.44% of live weight and 61.8% of hot carcass/hanging weight
The formula I used for Dressing Percentage came from one of the sites below:
Hot carcass weight / Live weight x 100 = Dressing %
The source I used says that "grassfed beef tends to yield 55-58% dressing percentage."
These are the sites I found while checking to see how our results compare to expectations:
Tennessee Extension: How much meat to expect from a beef carcass
UC Cooperative Extension: How does an 1163 pound steer end up weighing 362 pounds?
Now for the photos. Hopefully this will be helpful for figuring out how much freezer space is needed. This is a 20.3 cu. ft. freezer.
I put some of the meat in the baskets, which didn't show up on the close-up, so I included this photo.
Close-up of the filled freezer. Remember, the white box in the lower right corner is not included.
The filled freezer.
I'm not extremely fond of the way this butcher labels the meat, and they don't weigh individual packages so I had to do that myself. However, we'll definitely use them again for several reasons.
1) Most importantly, this man is very humane and understands our concern for our animals to the point he was willing for him to be on pasture and have hay the night before and offered to kill in the trailer, parked away from the building.
2) He's the closest to home, a mere 15 minutes away.
3) About a mile out of our way is a scrap yard dealer who is willing for us to weigh the trailer before and after--for $2!
As I said, they don't mark the packages with the same detail some butchers do, but here are the packaged weights we got:
Roasts - 46.97 lbs. (14 pkgs.)
Hamburger - 102.05 lbs. (97 pkgs.)
Ribeye - 18.125 lbs. (11) That's 6.9%
Stew Meat - 12.62 lbs. (10)
Soup Bones with meat - 4.76 lbs. (5)
Round Steak - 25.16 lbs. (9)
Sir Loin - 20.07 lbs. (9) Most were two to a package, 1" thick.
T-Bone - 10.07 (5)
Tenderloin - 4.11 lbs. (3)
Filet Mignon - 1.61 lbs. (1)
Sausage Meat - 10.02 lbs. (1) This is what I asked him to set aside for us to make sausage, chunks of beef with some fat.
Ox Tail - 1.83 lbs. (1)
New York Strip - 4.99 lbs. (6) Also packaged in twos.
Bones - 23.2 lbs. He didn't shrink-wrap them, left them loose in a box, and I put them in ziplock bags.
Advisory: I spent a long time on this, but math is NOT my forté and I had to add up long columns and change fractions on an adding machine, so let me know nicely if you find any errors.
This is a July 1, 2013 steer we bought from freedomfarms in late September, 2013. (You named him Ronny, freedomfarms, although we called him Sir Loin. He was a sweet guy, and we had to condition ourselves for the hard day we knew was coming.) Sir Loin was an escape artist who loved to be in our back pasture where the pond was, even abandoning his herd mates to get there, so he didn't have any special pasture. He got our regular high-copper minerals, and last winter he had access to a protein tub with the others, along with grass hay. He escaped the pasture with the handy loading chute the day before we were going to load him, and he came up to the house. I wasn't sure if he was trying to make me feel relieved to be almost done with his escapades or if he was trying to make a last plea to be a house pet! Whatever his reason, he followed me through a nearby gate without even a bucket to tempt him, which made me feel more guilty and made loading him more stressful than I had wanted.
We took him to be butchered on Oct. 28 of this year when he was a few days shy of 28 months old. Since our butcher was willing, we kept him on pasture until we loaded him, so he had a full belly. The butcher offered to come out to our trailer to spare him the stress of being moved into the pen. The butcher was quite complimentary and said he was a really nice steer and made really good beef.
Here are the stats:
Live weight - 720 lbs.
Hanging weight (hot carcass) - 425 lbs.
Total package weight (after 2 full weeks hanging time) - 262.4 lbs. plus 23.2 lbs. of bones
Dressing percentage - 59.03%
Packaged weight - 36.44% of live weight and 61.8% of hot carcass/hanging weight
The formula I used for Dressing Percentage came from one of the sites below:
Hot carcass weight / Live weight x 100 = Dressing %
The source I used says that "grassfed beef tends to yield 55-58% dressing percentage."
These are the sites I found while checking to see how our results compare to expectations:
Tennessee Extension: How much meat to expect from a beef carcass
UC Cooperative Extension: How does an 1163 pound steer end up weighing 362 pounds?
Now for the photos. Hopefully this will be helpful for figuring out how much freezer space is needed. This is a 20.3 cu. ft. freezer.
I put some of the meat in the baskets, which didn't show up on the close-up, so I included this photo.
Close-up of the filled freezer. Remember, the white box in the lower right corner is not included.
The filled freezer.
I'm not extremely fond of the way this butcher labels the meat, and they don't weigh individual packages so I had to do that myself. However, we'll definitely use them again for several reasons.
1) Most importantly, this man is very humane and understands our concern for our animals to the point he was willing for him to be on pasture and have hay the night before and offered to kill in the trailer, parked away from the building.
2) He's the closest to home, a mere 15 minutes away.
3) About a mile out of our way is a scrap yard dealer who is willing for us to weigh the trailer before and after--for $2!
As I said, they don't mark the packages with the same detail some butchers do, but here are the packaged weights we got:
Roasts - 46.97 lbs. (14 pkgs.)
Hamburger - 102.05 lbs. (97 pkgs.)
Ribeye - 18.125 lbs. (11) That's 6.9%
Stew Meat - 12.62 lbs. (10)
Soup Bones with meat - 4.76 lbs. (5)
Round Steak - 25.16 lbs. (9)
Sir Loin - 20.07 lbs. (9) Most were two to a package, 1" thick.
T-Bone - 10.07 (5)
Tenderloin - 4.11 lbs. (3)
Filet Mignon - 1.61 lbs. (1)
Sausage Meat - 10.02 lbs. (1) This is what I asked him to set aside for us to make sausage, chunks of beef with some fat.
Ox Tail - 1.83 lbs. (1)
New York Strip - 4.99 lbs. (6) Also packaged in twos.
Bones - 23.2 lbs. He didn't shrink-wrap them, left them loose in a box, and I put them in ziplock bags.
Advisory: I spent a long time on this, but math is NOT my forté and I had to add up long columns and change fractions on an adding machine, so let me know nicely if you find any errors.