![](https://greatgrassbeef.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/grass_field_cows-1-1024x258.jpg)
About the Meat:
Our grass finished beef is sold in bulk as a whole, half, or split half of beef. Bulk purchase provides you a much more cost effective outlet for purchasing quantities of beef.
Spring Beef Versus Fall Beef:
* Spring Beef: The animals harvested in the spring will be slightly older at 23-26 months of age, resulting in a more mature carcass. As the animals mature, they develop more marbling, the flecks of fat throughout the beef. The marbling is what gives the beef the excellent flavor it is known for. Thus, as more mature animals, the beef will be larger with a slightly higher fat content, both in marbling and fat on the surface of the cuts. In traditional terms, spring beef would be more likely to grade high “choice” to “prime” than our fall beef. As far as the weight of the beef is concerned, you could expect an average spring half of beef to be approximately 50-100 pounds heavier than the fall beef.
* Fall Beef: The animals harvested in the fall are younger at 18-20 months of age, and thus will have a slightly smaller carcass, and a lower fat and marbling percentage. Although leaner than our spring beef, we still target an animal that could grade “choice” to high “choice”. We utilize special crops to finish our fall beef on, and thus they go through the same finishing process, just on different forages.
Bulk Beef – The Best Buy!
Our bulk grass finished beef is sold as a whole animal, by the half, or a “split half”. To comply with state regulation, the sale is actually of the live animal, and then we arrange processing by a licensed processing plant. The weight of the animal is based upon the “hanging weight” of the meat that reaches the processing facility.
Our prices for 2024 are:
Whole Beef – $3.85 / pound hanging weight
Half Beef – $3.90 / pound hanging weight
Split Half – $3.95 / pound hanging weight
In addition to the above price that you pay to the farm, you will pay the processor for their on farm processing fee, as well as for cutting and wrapping.
If you choose to purchase a whole or half of beef, you will provide instructions to the processor of exactly how you want the meat cut and packaged, to assure you get the correct serving sizes for your family and that your favorite steaks are including in the processing order.
We also sell “split halves”. If a full half of beef is too much for you, we can provide you with a quarter of a beef as a split half. Unfortunately, the back quarter of the beef contains different cuts than the front quarter, so simply purchasing a quarter doesn’t give you the full selection of cuts you would expect. Thus, our split halves are partially from the front quarter, and partially from the back quarter, for a full selection. If you choose to purchase a split half, then you will not be able to provide specific cutting instructions, but instead will be required to take our normal cutting and packaging specifications (two steaks per package, hamburger in one pound packages, etc).
One concern we often hear is how much storage space is needed for the beef. Typically, a split half of beef will require about four cubic feet of storage space in your freezer, and a half of beef will require about eight cubic feet.