A couple of my regular readers commented both on the site and privately asking me about currently beef prices local and have made comments or asked if I feel that I am getting my money’s worth raising a beef calf.. this was a interesting thought, so I am going to share with you the details to the best of my knowledge and we see if I save any money or not.. Regardless of if I do, I like know how my calf is being raised, and that he had a good cow life, so I hunted a number of different websites until I found a farm that I felt not only seem to treat their cows well but in fact better then me! and I will use their current pricing as a guideline, I will have to adjust this once again when it time to send him to butcher, but it gives me a base line to start with * See above for the new marty page for regular updates, and also to see me breakdown other critter raising costs vs in-store costs.
To date Marty cost’s are 246.66
- Marty-$150.00 **
- Milk replacer-$80.00 *
- Feed-$14.00
- Baking Soda- $1.46
- Hay-$1.20
- Bedding-Free to date-Self-Harvested
* I buy higher end milk replacer because I feel its the right thing to do, if you want to know more read my calf milk rant talk on the subject
** I bought Marty privately and at the age of three weeks well started on milk and bucket training, locally its 50 per week, so I could have bought a calf at a week old for 50 if I wanted to save money sort of, given the cost of the good milk replacer, it would be very close to a wash in the end for me, but for someone that was going with the standard 40 dollar bag, it would be a reasonable cost savings of over a hundred dollars to do it soon.
I will update his costs per month for a running total over his grow out as well as his imputes on a month base, once I figure out a number for his manure value on the farm.
*Currently pasture raised, no extra’s local beef prices for fall of 2011 They say that the average 24 month or younger beef is typically 125 pds per side, or 250 pds of meat, not including bones, or organs, if they sell whole its at 5.25 per pd so our start base is 1487.50 at farm gate sale price, don’t even know how to add in the fact that I plan on getting his hide back and self-tanning it, but it will certainly have to find a way into impute raither then output, same as his manure, I will have to figure out a approx value to assign to it as well.
Just another Day on the Farm 
Interesting stuff. We just bought a 1/4 beef for $1.80lb hanging weight+processing of .45/lb. So, $2.25lb total for grassfed, no ATB beef.
Hi Andrea,
Thought I should check out a few more sites, and so here is the local food coop page on Grassfed beef.
https://www.easternontariolocalfood.org/shop/category_producers.php?subcategory_id=30
And just regular raised farmgate beef
https://www.easternontariolocalfood.org/shop/category_producers.php?subcategory_id=24
Boy, compared can you ever get your beef at a very reasonable price indeed.. I grabbed the local flyers from this week.. Lean ground beef, is right around 3.99 per pd, and Sirloim roast 9 per pd. T-bone, reg 11.99 to 13.99 a pd so the prices for pasture raised farm gate sales are not out of line compared to buying in the store.
If a 40lb bag (of composted manure) costs 4.00$ then is it safe to assume little Marty’s a walking gold mine at 10 cents/lb? How many pounds of poop can he produce in day anyway?
Holy cow Batman, never thought about it this way before!! : )
Okay, so I wrote this earlier and been thinking about it some more… If you’re talking about the BIG picture, there’s also all of the straw, urine, spilled water to figure into the poundage here. Not to mention the fact that when you buy a bag at the garden centre, it’s usually totally saturated (which is probably straight water added in) as well. So, would you need to do a weigh-in right off of the manure pile on a day like today when everything is soaking wet to get an “apples to apples” comparison?
Hi Deb,
I will indeed have to do some figuring out, I am planning on weighin his daily output of poop once a month for a base average, then I need to do some research on how much that will weigh once its composted down with its bedding, and only then can I weigh it and get a idea of how to figure out how many days equal one 40 pd bag of compost.
Very interesting and I’m looking forward to see how it all works out. We get our beef from friends of ours for $2.00/lb plus .40 – .50/lb cut and wrap. I would buy from them even if it were more expensive because I know it’s pastured, it’s keeping a small farmer doing the farm thing on the family land, and because I *know* they have lived the best lives possible. Heck, even their barn cats are bright eyed and happy. It will be worth it even if in the end you get close to the store prices becuase you’ll know he had a decent, good life and nothing will match the quality of the beef you get.
HI Daisy, Wow, you are lucky to get it for 2.50 or so per pd locally, I could not touch that in my hunting in the area, I did find one local guy just down the lane, Tree guy who was willing to trade me beef for lamb, but he wanted a one for one trade and that’s just crazy given the price per pd of lamb vs the price per pd of beef, it was a thanks but no thanks at this time.
What is a family cloth?
Hi Ihavetriedit
Family cloth is cloth peices that are used to replace toilet paper, some folks use cut up old flannel sheets but for us, we have color coded (so we only use our own) baby face cloths, as I use lot more being a girl then DH, I also have a small drying rack in the bathroom and if its #1, I will just wash them out right after in the sink and hang to dry, if its the other, I have bucket with lid and baking soda in it, that gets used and then they are soaked and washed daily, it works well and says a amazing amount of money on the house budget and the other extra that I was not expecting, it seems to have helped my syptec system greatly to not have that paper product going down..
Wow FG,
I didn’t know you were doing the family cloth thing. Have you ever considered humanure? I’ve been reading up on it. It sounds like it might be interesting to try out.