Thread: The price of meat these days is a joke.

Originally Posted by XR500

Last beef heifer we had homekilled using a homekill outfit (as opposed to killing and breaking it down ourselves) using the meatworks rate last October, worked out at $11/kg average across all cuts. Not cheap, but definitely cheaper than the supermarket.

If we do it ourselves (2 days for 2 people on the knives and mincer etc) it obviously comes down a lot more.

Last animals we sent to the works in March (2.5 year old beef heifers not producing decent milk) yielded $5.80 a kg on the hook. So you can see homekill does increase the meat cost somewhat.

$5.80 a kilo is your costs, or a price you were happy to let those meats go?

Originally Posted by Black Rabbit

$5.80 a kilo is your costs, or a price you were happy to let those meats go?

My costs of raising beef are of little concern to the works, or the supermarkets!!!

$5.80/kg was what the beef processing plant paid me. 'On the hook' means carcass hanging on the weigh scale hook with no guts inside, no head and no hide. So almost all bones are included in the weight.

Very roughly, a live beef animal that weighs 500kg will weigh about 250kgs 'on the hook', and if you removed every bone from every cut, the meat left would be about 125kgs.

To get a 500kg beef animal (too small to really be viable at the works, steers need to be 650-700kgs) you need to keep a mum (600kg cow) alive on your property eating 16-25 kgs of dry matter each and every day of the year, then its calf on the farm for 1.5 years eating 5-20 kgs of dry matter a day, dose it with minerals 3-4 times, a worm or two, hope it doesn't die, then sell it and get $1600ish. If it was a dry year, it may have eaten silage to the tune of $600 (lost revenue).

Then try paying a mortgage, avoid like the plague hiring anyone to assist you as generally they are more hassle than they are worth, pay exorbitant costs of having fert applied, mending your own tractor etc etc etc, Regional council rates, district council rates and on it goes.

Meat based protein continues to be rorted by the pack houses and the conglomerate supermarkets.

Originally Posted by XR500

My costs of raising beef are of little concern to the works, or the supermarkets!!!

$5.80/kg was what the beef processing plant paid me. 'On the hook' means carcass hanging on the weigh scale hook with no guts inside, no head and no hide. So almost all bones are included in the weight.

Very roughly, a live beef animal that weighs 500kg will weigh about 250kgs 'on the hook', and if you removed every bone from every cut, the meat left would be about 125kgs.

To get a 500kg beef animal (too small to really be viable at the works, steers need to be 650-700kgs) you need to keep a mum (600kg cow) alive on your property eating 16-25 kgs of dry matter each and every day of the year, then its calf on the farm for 1.5 years eating 5-20 kgs of dry matter a day, dose it with minerals 3-4 times, a worm or two, hope it doesn't die, then sell it and get $1600ish. If it was a dry year, it may have eaten silage to the tune of $600 (lost revenue).

Then try paying a mortgage, avoid like the plague hiring anyone to assist you as generally they are more hassle than they are worth, pay exorbitant costs of having fert applied, mending your own tractor etc etc etc, Regional council rates, district council rates and on it goes.

Meat based protein continues to be rorted by the pack houses and the conglomerate supermarkets.

Only a new business model may could overcome current price surge, and giving the real benefits to farmers and those whom paying at the point of sales with pains wherever in NZ or overseas market where NZ meat were exported to. Personal, I do `t see any NZ beef here in the capital city of China, only Aussie `s, frozen one, low quality and the cost is up to $22.00 per kilo on promotion.
I heard there is company was trying to do direct sell to consumers in Auckland in the first year of C19 pandemic, but maybe it will ended up like the kiwi international airlines story. "Bring a knife to a gun fight" in meat market of NZ, hope you could know what meant. But still there are chances to streamline sales lifecycle from farm to table, cut out unnecessary middle men by means of new business models, financial instruments, better budgets planing etc. I almost see every articles with the word of sustainability, but seldom to see how to sustain with sound approaches.
Anyway, if I have to stay in NI, Auckland because of job and INZ, not my dreaming place of Canterbury, I think I can digest one of your cow occasionally if there is any, put my efforts in to work on carcass, pay you sir the initial price, price to cover your costs and reasonable profits, then for the extra earning from sales, there will be another %% after logistics and tax.

Originally Posted by XR500

My costs of raising beef are of little concern to the works, or the supermarkets!!!

$5.80/kg was what the beef processing plant paid me. 'On the hook' means carcass hanging on the weigh scale hook with no guts inside, no head and no hide. So almost all bones are included in the weight.

Very roughly, a live beef animal that weighs 500kg will weigh about 250kgs 'on the hook', and if you removed every bone from every cut, the meat left would be about 125kgs.

To get a 500kg beef animal (too small to really be viable at the works, steers need to be 650-700kgs) you need to keep a mum (600kg cow) alive on your property eating 16-25 kgs of dry matter each and every day of the year, then its calf on the farm for 1.5 years eating 5-20 kgs of dry matter a day, dose it with minerals 3-4 times, a worm or two, hope it doesn't die, then sell it and get $1600ish. If it was a dry year, it may have eaten silage to the tune of $600 (lost revenue).

Then try paying a mortgage, avoid like the plague hiring anyone to assist you as generally they are more hassle than they are worth, pay exorbitant costs of having fert applied, mending your own tractor etc etc etc, Regional council rates, district council rates and on it goes.

Meat based protein continues to be rorted by the pack houses and the conglomerate supermarkets.

I think that's what we paid a local farmer for a baren dairy cow about 7 years ago. It's next to impossible to find anyone willing to bend the rules nowadays.

Originally Posted by XR500

.............

Meat based protein continues to be rorted by the pack houses and the conglomerate supermarkets.

Yes -