Hanging Weight vs. Take-Home Weight: An Explainer to Copy
A customer-facing explanation of live, hanging and take-home weight, with worked tables (1,250 lb steer, quarter math, freezer space) to paste onto your site.
Every ranch selling shares has had the same email: "I paid for 190 pounds and got 118. Where's the rest?" The customer is not being difficult; nobody told them what hanging weight means before they paid a deposit. This guide gives you a plain-English explainer, with worked tables, that you can copy onto your own share page and link from every invoice.
Why the three weights exist
There are three numbers for the same animal, and your customer is only ever going to see one of them on their scale at home.
- Live weight is the animal walking onto the trailer. For a finished beef steer in the Upper Midwest that is commonly 1,150–1,400 lbs.
- Hanging weight (also called carcass weight, hot weight or dressed weight) is what the locker weighs after the hide, head, hooves, organs and blood are removed. It is roughly 60–63% of live weight for a grass-finished steer, a little higher for grain-finished.
- Take-home weight (packaged weight, freezer weight) is what goes in the boxes after the carcass has aged, the bones are cut out, the fat is trimmed and the meat is wrapped. It is roughly 60–65% of hanging weight, depending on how much bone-in and how much fat the customer wants.
Nearly every ranch prices on hanging weight, because that is the number the locker writes on the ticket and the number processing is charged on. The customer sees take-home weight. The gap between those two is where the confusion lives.
A worked example: one 1,250 lb steer
Here is the math on a typical animal, with rounded numbers. Use your own ratios if you track them; these are in the range most ranches we talk to report.
| Stage | Weight | How it's figured |
|---|---|---|
| Live weight | 1,250 lbs | On the trailer |
| Hanging weight | 750 lbs | About 60% of live |
| Take-home weight | 470 lbs | About 63% of hanging |
What disappears between hanging and take-home, roughly, on that 750 lb carcass:
- Water loss during 10–14 days of dry aging: 20–35 lbs
- Bone removed from roasts and ground: 120–150 lbs
- Fat trimmed: 60–90 lbs
- Small trim losses in cutting and wrapping: 10–20 lbs
Ask for more bone-in cuts (T-bones, bone-in chuck roasts, short ribs, soup bones) and the take-home number rises, because bone is now in the box. Ask for everything boneless and lean, and it falls. That is why no ranch can promise an exact take-home weight.
The quarter: what the customer actually gets
Divide that same steer by four.
| Whole | Half | Quarter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hanging weight | 750 lbs | 375 lbs | 187 lbs |
| Take-home (approx.) | 470 lbs | 235 lbs | 118 lbs |
| Freezer space needed | 14–16 cu ft | 7–8 cu ft | 3.5–4.5 cu ft |
| Boxes to carry | 12–14 | 6–7 | 3–4 |
A quarter at 118 lbs take-home typically breaks down something like this on a standard cut:
- Ground beef: 45–55 lbs
- Steaks (ribeye, strip, sirloin, T-bone or tenderloin): 18–24 lbs
- Roasts (chuck, arm, rump, round): 25–30 lbs
- Short ribs, brisket, stew meat, soup bones: 12–18 lbs
Tell customers a quarter is a "split half" and comes with the standard cut, because the locker is cutting one half of the animal and dividing it evenly. Two quarters from the same half get the same thing. That one sentence ends a lot of "can I have all steaks" questions.
The money: a worked price
Suppose you charge $4.75 per pound hanging weight, the locker charges $1.05 per pound hanging for cut and wrap, and there is a $140 kill fee split four ways. On the quarter above:
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Beef | 187 lbs × $4.75 | $888.25 |
| Processing | 187 lbs × $1.05 | $196.35 |
| Kill fee (¼) | $140 ÷ 4 | $35.00 |
| Total | $1,119.60 | |
| Per lb take-home | $1,119.60 ÷ 118 lbs | $9.49 |
That last line is the one to put on your page. "About $9.50 per pound for everything in the box, steaks and roasts included" is a number a customer can compare to the grocery store, where ground beef alone might be $6–8 and a ribeye $15–20. Your price looks fair because it is, but only if they see it per take-home pound.
Freezer space, in words people can picture
Frozen packaged beef runs about 30–35 lbs per cubic foot once you allow for odd shapes and air gaps. The usable rules:
- Quarter (about 118 lbs): fits a 5 cu ft chest freezer with room to spare. A 3.5 cu ft freezer is tight.
- Half (about 235 lbs): 7–8 cu ft. A standard upright kitchen freezer compartment will not do it.
- Whole (about 470 lbs): 14–16 cu ft. Most families splitting a whole are running two chest freezers.
Tell people to have the freezer running two days before pickup, and to bring coolers for the drive. A quarter is three or four boxes the size of a banker's box, frozen hard.
The explainer you can copy
Paste this onto your share page or a page called "How pricing works," and change the numbers to yours.
How our beef is priced, and why your freezer weight is lower than your invoice weight
We sell beef by the quarter, half and whole, priced on hanging weight. Hanging weight is what the locker weighs after the animal is processed but before it is cut, aged and wrapped. It is the number on the locker's ticket and it is what processing is charged on, so it is what nearly every farm uses.
What you take home is less than hanging weight, because during cutting the bones are removed from most cuts, the fat is trimmed, and the meat loses water as it ages. For a typical animal from our farm, about 62% of the hanging weight ends up in your freezer.
Example quarter:
- Hanging weight: 185–195 lbs
- Packaged beef in your freezer: 115–125 lbs
- Price: $4.75/lb hanging weight = about $890
- Processing (cut, wrap, kill fee share): about $230
- Total: about $1,120, or roughly $9.50 per pound of beef in your freezer
Your exact total depends on your animal's weight. We send an invoice with the actual hanging weight the day the animal is processed, and the balance is due before pickup. Your deposit of $200 is applied to the balance.
Freezer space: a quarter needs about 4 cubic feet; a 5 cu ft chest freezer is plenty.
Questions? [Email address or form link]
That is about 200 words. It handles the three questions that make up most of your inbox.
Questions customers still ask, and short answers
"Why do I pay for bone I don't get?" Because the locker weighs and charges on the carcass with the bone in, and pricing on hanging weight is how both the locker and the farm keep the numbers straight. The per-pound take-home price above includes it.
"Can I get a better yield?" Yes, by choosing bone-in cuts and less trimming. Yield is a customer's cut-sheet choice as much as the animal.
"Is 60% low?" No. Anything from 58% to 68% take-home from hanging is normal, with grass-finished animals and boneless cut sheets at the low end.
"What about pork?" Similar idea, different ratios. A 270 lb live hog hangs around 190–200 lbs and yields 140–150 lbs of packaged pork, so take-home is a higher share of hanging than with beef. Use separate numbers for your pork page.
"Why did my neighbour's quarter weigh more?" Different animal, different cut sheet. That is why we quote ranges, not a fixed weight.
What this means for your website
This explainer is the single most useful page on a meat-direct website, and it needs to be a real page with its own address, not a paragraph inside the order form. Link it from each share product, from the confirmation email and from the final invoice. Put the worked table on it with your own prices, and keep the "about $9.50 per pound in your freezer" line up to date when your price changes. When this page exists, the "where's the rest of my beef" email mostly stops, and the customers who do email are easy to answer with a link. For how the rest of the share flow fits together, see how to sell quarter, half and whole beef online.
If you want this page written and built with your numbers, our sites for ranches selling meat direct include a plain-English pricing page with a worked example, share products with deposits, and pickup details built into checkout. The Harvest plan is $2,995 setup plus $79 a month; see pricing for what is included and what is not.