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[ylr]

About a month ago, my mother asked if we wanted in 1/4 on a cow. She needed another person to buy in for the deal to happen, so I wound up paying a total of $540 (400 for the cow, 140 for processing). Got the meat today. It was about 85 lbs. of ground beef, plus an assortment of roasts, and four ribeye steaks at maybe a pound each, a total of around 113 lbs.

My gut tells me I overpaid. Did I?

[Bar-B-Lew]

That seems like a lot of ground beef.  Bentley would be happy with that.  $4.80/# on average for what you got seems high to me.

[Bentley]

$4.77/lb. overall...I am in!

[reubenray]

I use to buy a half a cow each year when I got my income tax refund (40+ years ago).  I don't anymore, because there is a lot of hamburger meat which I can normally get cheaper from local grocers.  I did buy close to a $1,000 of meat a few months ago, but I got what I wanted instead.

[1MoreFord]

I can't get decent ground beef around me for $4.80/lb.  Add a few good steaks and roasts and I'd think I've gone to heaven.

[Canadian John]

 Cost aside: A half or quarter ends up with some of the cuts not exactly what you might normally select, IE: lots of hamburger.

[BigDave83]

I had a customer that also owned a farm, he would sent whole cattle to the butcher and have the whole thing ground, the they froze it in about 1.25# packs. I think back then he sold it for 3 bucks a pack. I used to buy 25 or so packs at a time. It was some of the best tasting ground meat I can remember having. The difference in flavor between it and grocery store stuff was very  noticeable.

 Had another one that also raised beef cattle, he treated them better than a lot of people treat there children. He would go out to the pasture and talk to them, only the best if they were fed anything other than the pasture grass.
 He sold whole, half, and quarter, but also would have one cut up and sold it for $5 a pound for any cut, he would give you so much of something, if you wanted ribeyes you had to buy some roasts or ground meat also. I bought different cuts and roast from him and flavor difference was evident.

If I had room for it in the freeze I would drop $5 a pound for half or quarter, especially if I knew of people that bought from this source before with great reviews from people I knew.

[02ebz06]

I bought a hind quarter of Prime probably 35 years ago.
I think I paid $300 for it.  Was some "good eats" as Alton Brown would say.

[ICIdaho]

I buy beef this way.  Typically, the price per pound that I get from my friends who raise the beef, is the going rate of hamburger.  So if the going rate of hamburger is 4$ per pound, that is what we pay for everything and you get roasts, steaks, etc.

[ylr]

Beef is relatively cheap in W. Ky.; I had several coworkers tell me I could have got the same thing for at least $50 cheaper. Thing is, we weren't there when they divvied it all up, so I think we got more than our fair share of hamburger, relative to the other cuts. One of the other buyers was my stepsister's husband, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut on this one. Will I do it again with them, if another opportunity arises? Nope.