Hanging → Take-Home Weight

The step most buyers miss: from hanging weight, another 25–45% disappearsduring cut-and-wrap. Bones, trimmed fat, gristle, and blood from aging all stay at the processor. What’s left — what you carry home in butcher paper or vacuum bags — is your take-home weight.

Bone-incutting keeps ribs attached to roasts and steaks, T-bones together, and chops on the rack. Yield is highest (65–78% of hanging depending on species) but you’re buying bone in every package. Boneless trades some yield for convenience — steaks are easier to portion, roasts easier to carve, but you lose 10–15% of the weight.

Example: a 750 lb beef carcass cut bone-in yields about 500 lb of take-home meat. The same carcass cut boneless yields about 428 lb. Both are “half a beef” — just packaged differently.

Cooler planning: budget 1 cubic foot per 35 lb of wrapped meat. A 15 cu ft chest freezer holds roughly a full beef half. See the Freezer Capacity calculator for exact sizing.

take_home = hanging_weight × (take_home_% ÷ 100)
beef bone-in 65–70% · boneless 55–60% · lean trim 48–52%
pork bone-in 72–78% · boneless 62–68%
lamb bone-in 70–75% · boneless 60–65%
freezer_space ≈ take_home ÷ 35 cu ft