Beef Processing Cost Is It Better to Do It Yourself
If y'all raise cattle, pigs, sheep, and other four-legged animals, how can you lot sell meat? Y'all have two basic options. You can have your meat processed and so sell individual cuts, either wholesale or retail, which means yous are selling meat. Or you tin sell the whole creature to i person (or two) and deliver that beast to the locker for processing. In that situation, you are technically selling an fauna, rather than meat.
Selling individual cuts
If yous sell individual cuts, you accept to have a license in most places. You will also accept to have freezer space for property all of that meat, and it shouldn't exist your ain personal freezer. A commercial freezer that has a temperature read-out on the outside is best, which is pricey, just at a minimum, you need a thermometer in it, and you should keep a temperature log that shows that the meat is ever beneath zero degrees Fahrenheit. Even if no one is checking this, it's for your own protection in example anyone ever gets ill.
It's a expert idea to have an on-farm store so that you tin can take regular hours and won't have customers walking through your firm. One of the biggest disadvantages of selling private cuts is that you have to detect a lot of customers, and nigh will simply buy a few cuts and come dorsum regularly as they do in the supermarket.
Selling the whole animal
If you sell the whole animal and deliver it to the locker for processing, you only need to find one customer for each animal. Sometimes 2 people will split a beef. While information technology's true that not that many people want to buy a whole fauna, you lot don't demand to find that many customers. If y'all simply have two or three extra lambs, for example, you lot only demand to find ii or 3 customers, rather than a dozen or more, if you were selling individual cuts of meat.
The customer pays you for the creature, and they pay the locker for the processing. They can take the animal cutting up, ground upwardly, cutting into stew meat, made into sausage, or any else they want. They only pay for exactly what they want. For example, if they don't want any hamburger patties or sausage, then they wouldn't take to pay for that service. If they don't like shoulder roasts, they can take that part of the animal made into footing or stew meat.
The bottom line
You lot can brand more than coin per animate being if you sell meat by the cutting. For instance, lamb chops can sell for $15 to $xx per pound, whereas a whole lamb sells for $6 to $10 per pound hanging weight. Go on in mind that some of the "hanging weight" will wind upward in the garbage, such every bit basic, unless you ask for them, so not every pound of hanging weight is edible. You also have more expenses with your on-subcontract store, freezers, and electricity. If you lot merely accept a few animals to sell each year, ultimately y'all would make more coin if you sell them as whole animals. I one time heard someone at a briefing say that you should not be selling individual cuts unless y'all had at least 100 animals per year to sell. I think that's high, but I wouldn't even think about an on-subcontract store until I was processing at least 10 caput of cattle or twenty smaller animals, such as pigs or sheep, annually. Your expenses will vary based upon whether or non you already take a building that tin can be used as a subcontract shop or how y'all want to build it. Ultimately you need to practice the math to effigy out which one will exist more assisting in your situation.
Because rules tin vary from state to state (and obviously country to country), you should check with your state Department of Agriculture and Department of Health to see what the specific rules are in your expanse.
The rules and options for selling poultry are entirely different, and I'll talk most that next calendar week.
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Source: https://thriftyhomesteader.com/2-ways-sell-meat-farm/