Custom Beef Processing in North Texas: Cut Sheets, Costs, and What to Expect

Buying a half cow is exciting right up until someone hands you a cut sheet. Brisket or grind? Chuck roast or chuck eye steaks? What on earth is a dino rib, and why can't you get a T-bone?

Most families freeze up, check a few boxes, and hope for the best.

It doesn't have to go that way. Custom beef processing is just the step where a whole animal becomes the specific cuts your family actually eats, and you get to make the calls.

Here's how the process works, what it costs, how to fill out a cut sheet without regret, and what to expect when you buy a beef share in North Texas.

What Is Custom Beef Processing?

Custom processing means the beef is cut and wrapped to the buyer's specifications instead of a packer's standard cuts. You choose steak thickness, roast size, how much goes to ground beef, whether you want soup bones, and dozens of other details. Most custom processors handle pork, lamb, and goats the same way, but beef is where the choices really matter, because every cut decision changes what ends up on your table.

Custom-Exempt vs. USDA-Inspected Processing

Here's the part most people never hear about. There are two very different kinds of facilities doing custom work.

A custom-exempt facility processes animals for the owner's own household without a federal inspector on site. As Cornell's Small Farms Program explains, that meat has to be stamped "Not for Sale." It's perfectly legal, but it can't be sold, and no inspector looked at the carcass.

A USDA-inspected facility operates with inspectors from the Department of Agriculture on site, verifying the animal before slaughter, the carcass after, and the processing facility's food safety plan. That inspection is what allows the beef to be sold to a customer. That's how Texas Grass Fed Farms does it: every share is processed at a USDA-inspected facility, and our labels for grass fed and grass finished, no antibiotics, and no added hormones were approved by the USDA.

How Do They Process Beef?

The basic flow is the same almost everywhere. The animal is harvested, inspected, and split into sides; the carcass is weighed (that's your hanging weight); it hangs in a cooler to age; then a butcher breaks it down into your cuts, wraps or vacuum-seals every package, labels it, and freezes it. The cutting is where your cut sheet comes in.

How Long Should Beef Hang Before Processing?

Hanging, also called dry aging, lets natural enzymes tenderize the meat and deepen the flavor. It matters more than most people realize.

According to University of Missouri Extension, most of the benefit for well-finished beef shows up within 7 to 10 days at 34 to 36°F, and carcasses with very little fat cover shouldn't be aged much beyond 3 to 5 days because they dry out. Oklahoma State's fact sheet on custom beef processing yields notes that aging costs roughly 5 to 7% of carcass weight in moisture.

The takeaway: hang time is a judgment call based on the carcass, not a number to max out. Grass-finished beef tends to be leaner than feedlot beef, so a good butcher reads each animal.

Beef Processing Cost: What You'll Actually Pay

This is where buyers get confused, because there are three different weights and several ways to bill.

Live Weight, Hanging Weight, and Take-Home Weight

Live weight is the animal on the hoof. Hanging weight, or hot carcass weight, is what's left after the hide, head, and organs come off. Take-home weight is the packaged beef that goes in your freezer.

Take-home is always less than hanging weight, because bone, fat trim, and moisture come out during aging and cutting. Washington State University Extension puts it at about 55 to 60% of hanging weight for mostly bone-in cuts, and 50 to 55% if you go heavy on boneless cuts and ground beef. You're not losing beef so much as not paying to freeze bones.

How Processing Fees Usually Work

Traditionally, you pay two bills. The farmer or rancher gets paid for the animal, and the processor charges a harvest or kill fee plus a cut-and-wrap fee per pound of hanging weight. Extras like patties, sausage, and smoked items cost more on top of that.

That's a lot of moving parts for a first-time buyer. So we built our pricing to make it simple.

How Texas Grass Fed Farms Prices a Beef Share

Every share is priced per pound of hanging weight, and all standard processing fees are included. As of October 2026, a quarter runs $10.00 per pound, a half $9.75, and a whole $9.50. Prices can change from one round to the next, so check current bulk beef share pricing before you reserve. You put down a deposit, and the balance is based on your animal's actual hanging weight.

Using those October 2026 prices, a half that hangs at 300 pounds would come to $2,925, processing included. At a 55 to 60% yield, that's roughly 165 to 180 pounds of packaged grassfed beef. The only additional charges are extra processing billed by the pound, like hamburger patties, sausage, flavored ground beef, and bacon.

How to Fill Out a Beef Processing Cut Sheet

Custom cut sheets come with our half and whole shares; quarters are cut to a standard list. If you bought a half or whole, your cut sheet is your custom order. Ours is organized so you can work through it top to bottom, and it comes with a few rules worth knowing up front.

First, pick one option per line. Second, any line you leave blank becomes ground beef by default, and you can check "grind" on any cut on purpose. Third, everything made from ground beef, like patties, sausage, and flavored ground, comes out of your ground beef total. A half yields roughly 75 pounds of ground, and each sausage or flavored ground variety has a 25-pound minimum, so three varieties would use all of it.

Beef Cuts to Request When Processing

Here's how we'd think through it.

• Premium steaks: ribeye, NY strip, tenderloin, and sirloin are the obvious picks. Don't skip picanha; it's the cut Brazilian steakhouses build their menus around.
• Short ribs: meaty, well-marbled ribs that turn rich and fall-apart tender when you cook them low and slow. Our short ribs recipe shows how.
• Dino ribs: a different cut entirely, the giant plate ribs Texas barbecue made famous. If anyone in your house owns a smoker, get them.
• Brisket and tri tip: keep the brisket whole for the smoker (here's our smoking guide), and don't let the tri-tip disappear into the grinder.
• Chuck: you can take regular or mini roasts, chuck steaks, chuck eye steaks, or grind the whole chuck. A chuck steak is just a chuck roast sliced to steak thickness, so it still wants a braise or the slow cooker, not a hot grill. Chuck eye steaks are the exception: cut right next to the ribeye, they're known as the poor man's ribeye and sear beautifully. For the roasts, Troy's personal favorite is beef bourguignon.
• Round and rump: round roasts, round steak, cutlets, and rump roasts are lean and budget-friendly. If you won't cook them, grind them.
• Soup bones and variety meats: soup bones make incredible bone broth, and marrow bones are some of the most nutrient-dense food in the whole animal. Check variety meats if you want the organs.

Not sure what a cut even is? Our complete grass-fed beef cuts guide walks through every one.

Why You Won't See T-Bones or Porterhouses

Our cattle are over 30 months old when they're processed. Mature, fully grass-finished beef has more flavor, but it comes with a federal rule: under 9 CFR 310.22, the vertebral column from cattle 30 months and older has to be removed. T-bones and porterhouses are cut with a piece of that backbone in them.

So you get the same two muscles a different way: the strip as NY strip steaks and the tenderloin as filets. Same beef, no bone. The same age rule is why sweetbreads aren't on our cut sheet either.

Beef Processing in North Texas: What to Expect

Texas Grass Fed Farms is based in McKinney and supplies grassfed beef shares from partner ranchers to families across North Texas, including McKinney, Allen, Plano, Denton, and the rest of Dallas-Fort Worth. We handle the rancher, the processing schedule, and the facility, so you don't have to call around to processors that are often booked months out.

Here's the order of operations: reserve a share with a deposit, and if it's a half or whole, fill out your cut sheet and send it back by the 22nd. The cattle are processed, hung, cut, and packaged to your order, and pickup is on Saturday afternoon in McKinney.

Plan your freezer storage before pickup day. A freezer holds less beef than most people expect, and a chest freezer packs differently than an upright. Our grass-fed beef planning guide walks through how much space each share needs.

Frequently Asked Questions About Custom Beef Processing

How much does it cost to have a beef processed?

It depends on the processor, but most charge a harvest fee plus a cut-and-wrap fee per pound of hanging weight, with extra charges for patties, sausage, and smoked items. With a Texas Grass Fed Farms share, standard processing is already included in the per-pound hanging weight price. You only pay extra for add-ons like patties and sausage.

What is custom meat processing?

It's processing an animal to the owner's specific instructions instead of standard retail cuts. The buyer fills out a cut sheet choosing steaks, roasts, ground beef, and extras. It can happen at a custom-exempt facility, where the meat is marked "Not for Sale," or at a USDA-inspected facility like the one that processes our beef.

Can you process your own beef?

You can own a live animal and have it processed at a custom-exempt facility for your own household's use. The meat can't be sold, though. If you'd rather skip finding the animal, arranging transport, and booking the processor, buying a share handles all of that for you.

Is ground beef considered processed meat?

No. The World Health Organization defines processed meat as meat transformed by salting, curing, fermentation, or smoking, like hot dogs, ham, and deli meat. Plain ground beef is just beef run through a grinder. Smoked sausage and bacon are a different story.

Where can I get custom beef processing in North Texas?

You can book directly with a processor, or buy a beef share and let someone else handle it. Texas Grass Fed Farms offers custom processing on every half and whole share, and quarters come cut to a standard list, with pickup in McKinney for families throughout Dallas-Fort Worth.

Get the Cuts Your Family Actually Eats

A cut sheet isn't a test. It's the one time you get to decide exactly how a whole animal feeds your family for months: thick ribeyes for Friday nights, roasts for Sunday, and juicy, flavorful ground beef for burgers on every busy Tuesday in between.

Ready to fill your freezer? Reserve a quarter, half, or whole beef share with a deposit today, or join the herd to hear when the next round opens.