Buy a Grass Fed Beef Cow From a Farmer (Step-by-Step Guide)

This step-by-step guide walks you through how to buy a cow from a farmer. From finding a local family farm to asking the right questions to determine the types of cuts, total price, best value, and how much meat you will get. Plus, you will know the steps to take when you get home with hundreds of pounds of meat. 

With beef prices on the rise, many people contact our farm asking if it’s worth it to buy a cow. Whether you’re looking at a quarter cow, half cow, or whole cow. The short answer is yes! When you buy a cow, you get premium quality beef at a fraction of the price. 

Before you buy a cow, there are lots of questions you need to ask. We’ve been selling beef from our farm for over a decade, so we have lots of experience with Q&A! In this step-by-step guide, we’ll explain how to buy a cow from a farmer. Here are a few things we’ll cover: 

• How do you find a farmer to purchase from?  
• What questions should you ask before you buy a cow?
• How do you make sure you’re getting the best value on beef?
• What type of beef should you get? grass-fed beef? grass-finished beef? grain-finished beef? organic beef? 
• What cuts of beef should be on the cut sheet?
• How many pounds of meat will you actually get?
• What’s the total price?

Jump to:

• How do you find a farmer to purchase a cow from? Where do you start?
• What questions should you ask before you buy a cow?
• How do you get the best value on beef? Will you really save money?
• Can my family really eat a whole cow? How much beef does a typical family eat in a year?
• ​​Types of Cuts and Cut List
• Recommended Beef Cuts 
• What about T-Bone Steaks?
• Should the beef be inspected?
• What type of beef? Grass Finished? Grain Finished? Organic? Something else?
• What’s the difference between live weight, hanging weight and boxed weight? 
• How should the beef be packaged?
• How much freezer space is needed for a cow?
• How long will the beef last?
• What do you do once you get the beef home? 
• One More Thing

How do you find a farmer to purchase a cow from? Where do you start?

Believe it or not, buying a cow is just like any other big purchase. It will take a little research to find the farm you want to purchase from, but in the long run, you’ll be glad you did your homework.   

First, talk to family and friends and see if any of them have purchased a cow from a local farmer. If yes, did they have a good experience? 

Second, visit your local farmer’s market. You’ll likely find several beef farmers there. If possible, purchase a few individually packaged steaks, roasts or packages of ground beef from them and see if you like the quality of their beef.  If yes, you may have found the farm you want to purchase from.  

Another great resource is your local Extension office or USDA office. You can ask them for a recommendation of a local farmer that sells beef directly.  If you’ve never heard of these offices before, do an online search for the closest one to you. You’ll quickly see that these offices often partner with local universities and they offer lots of free information on a variety of topics — like buying a cow, planting a garden, running small business, and so much more. 

And of course, there’s always internet searches. Some sites aggregate local farmers, like EatWild or Local Harvest. These sites can be great, but keep in mind that farmers have to pay to be part of these sites. Therefore, the lists are not all-inclusive. 

What questions should you ask before you buy a cow?

We know this is a long article, so we’re diving right in and listing the questions you should ask when buying beef. We go into more detail on each of these questions below.

• What’s the typical “take-home weight” for a quarter, half and whole beef?
• How much will I pay per pound of beef? 
• What am I responsible for if I purchase beef from you? Additional fees? Delivery? 
• How will the beef be packaged? 
• Where do your cows come from? Are they born and raised on your farm? 
• Where is the beef processed? 

How do you get the best value on beef? Will you really save money?

We’re often asked, will you really save money if you buy a side of beef? The answer is always “yes.” Buying beef in bulk is the most affordable way to have high quality, farm-fresh beef on your table. However, the amount you save will vary based on where you typically buy beef.  If you only shop for beef at high-end grocery stores, you’ll save more annually than if you typically purchase beef at discount stores. 

Another factor to consider in this question are unexpected payments and fees with beef processing. Some farms (like ours) have all-inclusive pricing that includes the cost of the animal and butchering so that you know exactly how much you will pay.

On other farms, there can be multiple payment times and fees. For example, on many farms, it’s common to make an initial deposit, and then the remaining balance and final payment are due when the farmer takes the animal to the local butcher. Then, you would pay the local butcher an additional slaughter fee, disposal fee, and sometimes a delivery fee. 

In order to determine your total annual savings, you have to take all of these costs into consideration. These are questions you should ask the farmer, and also the local butcher.

Can my family really eat a whole cow? How much beef does a typical family eat in a year?

The answer to this question varies by the number of family members and their individual appetites. Large families can easily eat one cow a year. On average, our customers with a family of four eat about a half cow every year. Here’s an easy formula that will help you figure out how much beef your family eats in a year:

My family usually eats ______ meals a week with 1 pound of beef
x
52 weeks a year
=
My family eats ________ pounds of beef per year.

​

​​Types of Cuts and Cut List

When you purchase beef from a farm, there are a range of cuts of you can choose from. If this is your first time working with local butchers and completing a cut sheet, it will help to know a little about a cow’s anatomy before you complete the beef processor’s cut list. In short, you cannot have an entire cow cut into steaks. Sorry, but it’s just not doable based on the animal’s anatomy.  This part may seem a little over-the-top, but stick with us and it’ll be a breeze to fill out the cut list. 

The USDA divides a cow into eight regions. These are known as the primal cuts, or the main cuts. Here are the eight primal cuts:

• Chuck
• Rib
• Loin
• Round
• Flank
• Short Plate
• Brisket
• Shank

Numerous cuts of meat can come from each of these sections. For example, at the grocery store you’ll see “round” sold as ground beef, round steak, eye of round, tip steak, tip roast, top round, and bottom round roasts. But, each of these round cuts come from numerous animals.  When you’re talking to the butcher, you’ll need to choose a few ways to have the round cut. You can’t do all of them that you see at a grocery store since there is a limited amount of meat on each animal. 

Recommended Beef Cuts 

• Steaks: Filet mignon, Sirloin Steak, Ribeye Steak, Strip Steak, Skirt Steaks and Flank Steak. We like cutting steaks into 3/4-1-inch thickness.  If you prefer a larger, thick steaks and your beef processor allows it, keep in mind you’ll be getting fewer steaks. For example, if you order a quarter beef, you would usually get approximately 6-7 sirloin steaks if they’re 3/4 -1-inch thick. If you have them cut to 1 ½ -2 inches thick, you may only get 3-4 steaks. It’s the same weight of beef, but how you have it cut makes a big difference on the quantity of steaks. 
• Roasts: Arm Roasts, Chuck Roasts, Round Roasts, Rump Roasts cut into 3-4 pound roasts.
• Ground Beef: Packaged in 1-pound packages
• Short Ribs: You could have this ground into hamburger, but we don’t recommend it. Short ribs are awesome.
• Stew Meat and/or Kabob Meat: These cuts are typically the trimmings from the steaks. 
• Brisket: You could have this ground into ground beef, but please don’t. Brisket is so good and there are lots of ways to cook brisket. 
• Soup Bones: We love soup bones. They make the best bone broth. We highly recommend them. 
• Organ meats: This is up to you, but we recommend it, especially liver. 

What about T-Bone Steaks?

A comment we sometimes hear is that people want more unique cuts, like T-Bone, Porterhouse Steak, Delmonico Steak, Club Steak, etc.

There are two main reasons you don’t see cuts like this on a cut sheet:  

First, some cuts have different names based upon the region. For example, a Kansas City Strip and a New York Strip are the same steak. 

Second, other cuts are a combination of cuts. For example, a T-bone steak is a strip steak on one side and a tenderloin on the other. If you decide to cut the bone out, you would no longer have a T-bone. Instead, you would have two distinct cuts — a tenderloin (or filet) and a strip steak. And if it’s an extremely large T-bone, it would be called a Porterhouse Steak, not a T-bone. According to the USDA, if the tenderloin section that is at least 1.25 inches across at the widest section, it’s a porterhouse steak. 

Should the beef be inspected?

All meat for public consumption in the United States must be inspected by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).  In some states, like Missouri, you can also have an inspector from a state inspection agency inspect meat, but state-inspected cannot cross state lines for sale.

USDA inspectors are very thorough, and the U.S. has the highest food safety records of any country. 

The USDA inspectors check the live animal to make sure they’re healthy from head to hoof and treated humanely. They also inspect the slaughtering process, the animal’s organs, the temperature of the meat, and make sure the carcass stays as clean as possible during the entire process. 

If beef doesn’t pass inspection, it is removed entirely from the food supply. When beef does pass inspection, it is stamped or labeled with the USDA inspection stamp, and that means it is fit to eat.

What type of beef? Grass Finished? Grain Finished? Organic? Something else?

Terms like grass finished, grain finished and organic have become buzz words lately. There are a lot of myths out there about cattle farms, and we want to help you separate fact vs. fiction. The cliff-notes version of each of these is below. If you want more details, check out our detailed post on each of these topics: What is Grass Fed Beef? What is Grain Fed Beef? and What do Beef Labels Really Mean?

Grain-Finished Beef:

• Spend the majority of their lives eating grass or forage 
• Spend 4-6 months at a feedyard eating a balanced diet of grains, local feed ingredients, like potato hulls or sugar beets, and hay or forage 
• May or may not be given U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved antibiotics to treat, prevent or control disease and/or growth hormones 
• Most beef is from cattle that are raised this way and the packages likely don’t have a specific label claim 

Grass-Finished or Grass-Fed Beef:

• Spend their whole lives eating grass or forage 
• May also eat grass, forage, hay or silage at a feedyard 
• May or may not be given FDA-approved antibiotics to treat, prevent or control disease and/or growth-promoting hormones 

Certified Organic: 

• Never receive any antibiotics or growth-promoting hormones 
• May be either grain- or grass-finished, as long as the USDA’s Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS) certifies the feed is 100% organically grown 
• May spend time at a feedyard 

Naturally Raised: (sometimes referred to as “never-ever”) 

• Never receive any antibiotics or growth-promoting hormones 
• May be either grain- or grass-finished 
• May spend time at a feedyard

In addition to understanding these terms, it’s important to know that these labels require farmers to have additional government inspections, file more paperwork, and pay hefty fees. It’s a very expensive and long process, and many farmers choose not to go through the process, even though their beef meets the government’s qualifications for some of these labels. 

It’s because of this fact, that we recommend you ask your local farmer “what would the label say if their beef was purchased from a local grocery store.”  How they answer this question will tell you a lot about how they raise their cattle and if they use sustainable agriculture practices.   

What’s the difference between live weight, hanging weight and boxed weight? 

On our family farm, our pricing is all-inclusive. We tell you what you’ll get for a specific price, and that’s what we deliver. We avoid terms like hanging weight because we think it’s extremely confusing to those that are familiar with cattle.

However, if you’re not in the St. Louis area and can’t buy from our farm, you will likely be told an amount based on the weight of the animal or from one of the processing stages. Here are the terms you need to know so that you can calculate your actual cost:

• Live weight (or “on the hoof”): how much a cow weighs when it’s alive and walking around. 
• Hanging weight (or “on the rail”): after the animal is slaughtered and all the unusable parts are removed (like head, skin and hooves), Hanging weight includes bones and meat. Typically, the hanging weight is about 60% of the live weight. 
• Boxed weight (or packaged weight): the weight of all the packages of individual cuts of meat that you will put in your freezer  This is typically about  60 percent of hanging weight. 

An important thing to keep in mind if you’re trying to figure out how much beef you’ll actually get is that some of the weight is lost during each step of the process.  

So, if you’re trying to do math with a farmer that talks in hang weight – if they say it’s $3.75 per pound hanging weight, then expect to pay $6.25 per pound ($3.75 / 0.60)  PLUS the butchering fee. Butchering fees vary based on region and the local economy. If you are doing a half beef share and splitting the beef with another family, you will split the butchering fee.

How should the beef be packaged?

Most farmers will give you an option between paper, shrink wrapped, or vacuum sealing packaging. We recommend vacuum sealing because it will keep the beef fresh for longer. 

Here’s what a vacuum sealed Rib Eye Steak looks like from our farm.

How much freezer space is needed for a cow?

The general rule of thumb is 1 cubic foot of freezer space for every 30-35 lbs of cut and wrapped meat. This means a quarter cow can fit in a small chest type freezer, and whole beef orders will need a large chest type freezer. 

On average, a quarter cow is approximately 110 pounds of meat, and we recommend 5 cubic feet of freezer space. A half cow is approximately 220 pounds of meat, and we recommend an 8 cubic foot freezer. A whole cow is approximately 440 pounds of farm-fresh beef.

If you don’t have a stand-alone freezer yet, you can usually get a good deal at a warehouse store like Sam’s or Costco. We have both chest and upright freezers at our house and we like both of them, but it it much easier to organize beef in an upright freezer. 

How long will the beef last?

The shelf life of frozen beef is approximately 1-year if frozen and vacuum sealed. The amount of time will be shorter if it is packaged in paper or shrink wrapped.

What do you do once you get the beef home? 

It’s exciting to buy a whole cow, but what do you do once you make the purchase? A whole cow is a lot of beef and you need to be prepared for your beef before you put it in your freezer. A few tips are below, and we go into more detail here.

1. Organize the beef in your freezer. We like to organize our beef by cut using plastic bins.  
2. Get a freezer alarm. Your freezer needs to stay at 0-degrees Farenheit to maintain the quality of your beef. Unfortunately, incidents like power outages, equipment failure, and improperly shut doors can lead to a freezer full of thawed and unsafe meat.  A Freezer Alarm will notify you if your freezer is at the incorrect temperature so that you can respond appropriately, before the meat goes bad. Our freezer alarm comes with a smartphone app and WiFi connectivity, which allows us to constantly monitor the temperature of our freezer from anywhere at any time.  It also sends alerts to our smartphones if the temperature reaches a dangerous level. 
3. Date your beef. If you purchase beef regularly, it helps to write the date on the beef so you know what beef needs to be eaten first. Organize the beef in your freezer so that you eat the oldest beef first, and avoid food waste. 
4. Freezer Inventory sheet. A freezer inventory sheet is a helpful log that keeps tabs of what’s in your freezer. You can make a paper log on Excel or download one online, or we like to use a magnetic white board on the front of our freezer that we update as needed. 

One More Thing

Do you want to learn more about beef? Below are a few popular beef posts and recipes you may like. In addition, we have an entire ebook about beef that goes through purchasing and preparing beef from a farmers perspective.

• 5 Tips After You Buy a Whole Cow
• Defrosting Meat: 4 Safe & Easy Ways
• Beef Liver Cubes: How to Hide Liver in Food
• Understanding Cuts of Beef: What Comes with a Quarter Beef, Half Beef
• Slow Cooker Pepper Steak
• Prime Rib Roast with Garlic Herb Butter

 We participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. See our disclosure policy for more details.