Discussions

I don't know if or when beef prices will go down. But I do know if you haven't eaten beef in 8 months you don't love it.  

Check out Henry Meats on PR270 north of No1. Quite reasonable and very good. Or source out a local farmer-much more reasonable than a store.

The price of beef has been going down, but they said it would be summer before we see a big difference at the retail level.  
 
But year, bulk buying beef is the way to go. Bulk buying any kind of meat is actually the most cost-effective way to do it, in general.

Jeez, consumers these days dont like producers at all. Gas is too high can affect the oil industry and its workers. Beef prices too high can affect farmers/ranchers. (Same with chicken, prok, lamb etc.)  
 
There are certain needs that people need and unfortunately, we need to accept the fact that you as a consumer cannot control the price you pay for it. So, we have to suck it up and pay for it, or go without it. (this includes fuel, hydro, phones wifi etc)

We have cut back our beef consumption considerably. We ended up raising our own pigs and chickens. I only buy a few lbs of hamburger a month. I can't even remember the last time we bought steak.  
 
Unfortunately we don't have room for a cow or we would raise one of those too! Lol

We get a quarter of a beef at a time and it's way more economical and you get to pick your cuts too!

Lol well if you bought a cow you would definitely only eat hamburger and not steak haha

Not exactly true, you might be surprised how many other cuts are taken out of a cow. If you have a younger cow, and by cow I saying a female bovine who has at least one calf or maybe even two, if you put that cow on a finishing ration and turn her into a D1 or D2 cow there can be a lot of steaks and roasts cut from the carcass, and you would not be able to tell the difference between it and a fed out yearling steer or heifer.  
 
I would like to contribute more to this thread, but have to try and get some sleep tonight, there are some things I would like to say, but it's going to have to wait till tomorrow.

When it comes to the high price of beef I have very mixed feelings. When you're in a supermarket and see people look at beef and then walk away you realize that it has become a product that is beyond a lot of people's budgets, and that just doesn't seem right. Then there is the other side of me that thinks that maybe people deserve not to be able to be able to afford to eat beef. My logic for this feeling might be considered flawed, but when I think back to when we had the BSE crisis and think of how little help the cattle industry received, especially the cow calf sector, I think serves the consumer right. The public was told that producers were being paid a low price because the boarder was closed and there was a surplus of beef so packing houses could not pay a high price for cattle. Yes the boarder was closed for export of live cattle and yet within three months meat from the large packing houses was crossing the boarder once again, and yet the story persisted, too much cattle not enough market. Funny how the packing houses doubled their capacity and expanded their facilities during this crisis, and not only that, but the federal government supplemented them on by products through the whole crisis and well beyond. The packing house industry destroyed the cow calf industry and now we are seeing the results.  
 
An interesting point is they never learned, they are back at it again, inventories of frozen beef in the US are at record highs, that means there is lots of beef around and yet pices to the consumer are very high, profits to packing houses on individual carcasses are also near record highs and when you look at boxed beef prices and compare them to the retail prices you realize that retailers are also making a lot of money on beef.  
 
Last year I had an ebrandon member get in contact with me about buying beef, the process took a while, but in the end she managed to purchase a half through Tendercuts in brandon Brandon, and when all was said and done I think that the price that she paid was around the $5.50 level for the meat, in other words $5.50 for regular grind hamburger. But also $5.50 for steaks and roasts or stew beef, and this was at a time when regular hamburger was well over $6.00 through retail outlets  
 
People do at times get ripped off, carcass prices last year at this time where $3.28 per lb, today they are down in the level of $2.82 per lb to the producer, these prices are Ontario of Alberta based, we get less here.  
 
Final thought, the federal government looked into the packing industry and what they did during the crisis and found that the industry had done no wrong, for some reason I believe that the people who did that investigation are still able to purchase beef and not even give it a second thought.

WE finish them off and either sell to market or for our own consumption. WE get every cut of meat available from these steers...and it tastes so much better than anything you can buy in the store. I have bought stewing meat in store and no matter what I do to it I cannot get it to taste anywhere near as good as our holstein steers!! The only cow you will only get hamburger from is if a cow falls and becomes incurably lame, then you can butcher her right away for hamburger meat.  
With all that being said, the price to have your own butchered and wrapped has also gone up so much in last few yrs! So we are not getting "free meat" when you factor in all those costs as well as the feed to finish these animals for the 2 yrs....unless you can do your own!! So we are all "hurting" more in that respect.

I couldn't go back to buying meat in stores after having beef and chickens straight from the farm. The thing that gets me other than prices is knowing that those farmers and their families are eating the same meat I am therefore likely not pumped full of god knows what! I notice a difference in the taste, colour and amount of fat in the beef we get butchered than what we have bought in the store. You can buy a quarter or half of a beef for yourself or find someone to split it with and have all cuts of meat. It has been very cost effective and I would like to think alot healthier. We don't eat red meat every day but it keeps in the freezer for a long time. I've bought ground beef in the store that is pink on the outside and brown on the inside with a ton of fat. We've never had that since buying right from the farmer.

The reason beef is so high is because all the beef producers had to quit because of the BSE fiasco. Most beef producers are ready to retire so the price of beef can only go up. At the current price beef producers are just recouping the thousands of dollars they lost in the previous 10 years. Unfortuntatly, once the rest of society thought the farmer had some cash they jacked the price they charged for services by 60percent, so if the price of cattle goes down more farmers will have to quit. There will be no new farmers, because for a young farmer to start he would need to borrow a million dolars and still make less than the guy flipping the burger.

it's been a long, long time since I have bought beef also.... just do without it.

If the beef prices are out of ones budget . Lamb or mutton as well as pork prices are very affordable for this upcoming bbq season  
 
Edited by jetsrule, 2016-03-31 16:07:37

A few years back I had an idea of how to make beef more affordable for the average person, by buying beef as a 1/2,or even a whole carcass does make it much more affordable. My idea was to have a freezer or locker plant where a person could keep a carcass that they had spoken for, and yet only pay for the meat as they took it home, it would have been frozen beef, but at the right price that inconvience seems to be overlooked. I looked into renting a building and installing an industrial sized cooling system as well as individual lockers for customers product, and also factored in labour as well as everything else I could think of. The idea was to market every fat animal we produced to the local market at a fair price, and I only wanted to work with the animals we produced which allowed to make sure of quality, by the time everything was figure out we realized two problems, one was we would be carrying a large debt since we would not get paid for some of the meat for an extended period of time, the second problem was the operation of the locker plant would add to the cost of the meat, which would take away from the incentive of buy meat this way. In the end, it was the scale of the operation which doomed the idea, it was not large enough to make it viable. In a way I do wish I could have been able to make it work, could have been a benefit to myself, as well as an abbitiore, and finally the customer.  
 
Edited by don brown, 2016-03-31 16:24:56

Myhandleistrain, contact Henry Meats @ 204-727-2830 in regards to purchasing lamb. He raises them himself. You may find his beef prices pretty reasonable too! This place is a hidden gem.  
They also now have a Facebook page, which looks like they've started posting specials on....nothing with beef so far but worth keeping an eye on!  
 
 
 
Edited by RobbieRay, 2016-03-31 16:49:42

I would love to shop there but I believe they are not open Satudays or evenings so I can't get there as I work Monday to Friday days.

Ter said "I would love to shop there but I believe they are not open Satudays or evenings so I can't get there as I work Monday to Friday days. "

Open Saturday's 9 to 5

See tendercuts - they buy Locally grown lambs in the area - also sending you a pm

I'll likely miss some but Brandon and surrounding area have a few different butcher shops, and I imagine that people would be happy with the products at all of them, there are four of them that come to mind right off hand. In no specific order there is Henry's, Old style, which is located south of Brandon, Obermaeir's, and Tendercuts, sorry for leaving you till last Marc, but some people do know that we might have a bit connection.

jetsrule said "If the beef prices are out of ones budget . Lamb or mutton as well as pork prices are very affordable for this upcoming bbq season     Edited by jetsrule, 2016-03-31 16:07:37"

Just wondering if anyone here happens to know of a farm where I could buy a whole goat?  
Superstore sells frozen goat and lamb meat imported from New Zealand. But the prices are not that cheap.

Check with Marc at tendercuts or phone Praire Rose Meats in Souris, number for Souris is  
483-2765.

don brown said "I'll likely miss some but Brandon and surrounding area have a few different butcher shops, and I imagine that people would be happy with the products at all of them, there are four of them that come to mind right off hand. In no specific order there is Henry's, Old style, which is located south of Brandon, Obermaeir's, and Tendercuts, sorry for leaving you till last Marc, but some people do know that we might have a bit connection. "

but the beef is awesome

Took a while to get it done, but hope you are still enjoying your beef. Nothing like a happy customer.

The meatman in oakburn. 234 6328. He sells sides for 4 dollars a pound. Kill cut and wrapped. All local meats. Very clean shop. Lamb goat and almost everything else. Worth the call.

don brown said "Check with Marc at tendercuts or phone Praire Rose Meats in Souris, number for Souris is   483-2765. "

Thank you, will check it out.

Try Bill Walker of Walker Farms in Miniota to see if he will be selling any soon. I heard he had Angus beef for sale in the fall.

I was looking at steaks the other day in a store in Bdn. I was amazed at how much fat there was on the steaks. No, it wasn't marbling, it was on the edges of the steaks. If the stores expect me to buy their meat, I want to pay for meat, not fat. I was able to find a couple of steaks with very little fat, which I did purchase. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bought any steaks.

Whole goats are readily available, usually in the fall. The biggest problem is that people want to butcher on the farmer's yard and that is not legal. You can kill it yourself but you have to take it off the farmer's property...even tho you now own it. Not many places to get a goat killed close to Brandon so for me to haul a few goats to an abbatoir & get it processed for you is going to raise the cost, mostly in fuel & time costs.  
I've had people balk at our live prices and so we tell them to go buy it at superstore.

Once again not trying to be a smart azz, but people's preferences for meat and finishing varies a lot, my suggestion would be, if your dealing with a butcher shop, ask the clerk or butcher for what your looking for. If you are looking for a prime steak with a limited outer fat cover be prepared to pay extra.  
Those of us who feed cattle live with premiums as well as discounts on the carcasses we deliver. These premiums and discounts are supposed to be passed on, and I believe they are. There is meat that goes to the H and R (hotel,restaurant) market, and because a specific type of meat is required they pay more.  
If I was delivering to a large packing house, the perfect carcass would be a CAB, Y1, prime carcass with a high level of cutibility, but since we are dealing with animals it's not something that happens very often.