Anyone direct market meat

I've been selling my cattle and ogs direct for 4 years now. I do well on the pigs and ok on the cattle. Right now I get $2/lb on hanging weight for hogs and $3/lb for beef on hanging weight. At that rate I d very well on the pigs, and cattle generally edge out selling at the sale barn. In my area I'm about in the middle of the price range. I place adds on Craigslist and on several pages on fb. Sales are a bit slower this year, but looks like I'll sell out again in spite of doubling production for the year.

So if your doing the same, how have you been doing it? Hoe do yu price it? And how do you market it? Such as where do you lace your adds?

Just looking for more ideas as I'll double the number of head I sell again this year and may need to step up my game some.

You might want to step up your game. Add chickens & eggs. ;v) The CL meat market seems to be doing good around here. Same for MN & IL CL postings, too. I run across them all the time, window shopping for equipment, hay, grain, etc. Many aren't up for too long.

It may be worth the effort.

Mike

My brother does a bit of this. Getting a bunch of repeat customers is usually the best bet.

I would tell some of your longer term customers, who are obviously happy with your product, that you are wanting to expand and ask them to tell their friends about you if they don't mind.

South of the metro in MN yet, couple of people I know are doing okay on beef, but the hangup is finding someone to process for them. What is being processed now, was scheduled a year ago, so kind of hard to expand much.

Tried. No market for it around here. Either people already have a freezer full of meat, or can't fathom having more than a pound of ground beef in the freezer at any given time. Everybody and their brother trying to sell eggs. Can't give 'em away.

The problem around here is not enough small lockers to keep up with the demand. They might have the animals ready to deliver, but slaughter schedules are months out. Most small herd producers here will only sell to customers that have a confirmed delivery date to the locker so they can manage their number of critters on feed. How does your area handle processing?

Have you considered going the retail route? You must have some Farmers Markets in your area. You will need to find a USDA licensed slaughterhouse, and as others have said getting appointment dates can be difficult. You would also probably need to purchase some large freezers. You will have additional expenses, but for us, doing the farmers market routine ended up averaging 25-30% over what we could get selling beef by the side. We don't do pork but my impression, from seeing what others are getting for pork at the farmers market and what you are charging by the side, is that there is a bigger difference in the pork than there is the beef. Don't look at meat prices in the grocery store, travel around and hit a bunch of farmers markets, you will be surprised what farm fresh products are bringing.

We try to direct market as much as we can. We are in West-Central Ohio and as many others have mentioned, our bottleneck is the butcher shop. We deal with a few local butchers but could sell a lot more if they had more availability.
We finish about 2 dozen steers per year, probably a little over half are sold direct.
We also have a farrow-to-finish operation, but we've reduced the size of it to about 25-30 sows. We direct market as much of that as we can, but recently we've had more luck selling off feeder pigs. A lot of people around here like to finish their own, many butcher their own too, so they are usually looking for groups of 5-10. We also switched from York-Hamp cross to York-Hamp sows and Berkshire boar as many people prefer meat from Berks.
Much of what we sell is due to advertising on Facebook marketplace, which is a challenge due to their policies of not selling animals or meat. So we set up a Facebook page for our farm that people follow to know when we have beef & pork available, and that helps us keep from getting our posts deleted due to not following the Facebook rules. We also have a lot of repeat customers, which is ideal.
The business plan we were striving for, and may accomplish at some point, was to find a natural foods store that we could consistently supply, but we haven't been able to find a butcher that can commit to butchering that much annual volume for us.

I do ask regular customers to pass on my inf and get several new customers every year that way. Those are the best customers as well as they come knowing what they are getting, usually because they had some at someone's house.

Here most of the butchers set a time and won't book before that, usually 6 months. My favorite place to process hogs said I had to wait til February to make appointments for June and july. I called in the 3rd I think and half the days were booked already. But my main 2 places take good care of me and I usually can get in what I need.

I sell about 10-12 market steers a year by quarters, half's, and wholes. I raise 8 and buy market steers to fill my beef orders. I buy my hay and straw for the cattle and also resell some on a self serve wagon out front along with 25# bags of corn year round. I also sell pumpkins and fall decorations I raise in the fall at my roadside stand. I keep a flock of chickens and sell the eggs direct. All my sales are direct to the customer. I live on a busy road and not many farmers left in my area where I live. I'm not getting rich but gives me something to keep me busy in my so called retirement.

keep doubling production every year and then lower the price. O wait, never mind, that does not end well. Bill

Not going to do that! I want to sell 10 or so steers per year and maybe 60 hogs. That will be enough. Should make that next year if things go well. That's about all I have room for anyway. Only have room for 10 yearling steers and 10 young calves. I I feed those out and replace when 10 sell evey year, that will keep 20 head on the farm at any given time. And my pig pens hold 15 nicely, and there are 2 of those, so 2 batches each is 60 pigs a year. If I can do that it will make a nice addition to retirement. That's the plan anyway. Lol

I use to sell several steers ever year till till the virus hit and several guys booked up all the locker appointments. It was a great way to earn cash money or have the check written to my kids for there collage fund.

TAS, where are you in west central Ohio? I am curently living in Hancock County but spent first 75 years in Auglaize County.

My son (15) started selling hogs 3 years ago. Hes up to $2.25 a pound hanging weight. We drop them at the locker and pick them up. Because we mainly sell to my coworkers and family. Taking 6 in a couple weeks and will have another 6 in a month or so. Between that and his newly started hay business and picking up walnuts the kid is off to a good start. He did 2 steers at $3.00 a pound but feel the hay sales are a better way to go

I butcher 6 head every year. Same customers every year. Would like to do more but can't find a butcher shop that will take them. 1 to Spokane WA 1 to Missoula MT 2 to Kalispell MT 1 to Bozeman MT 1 to Fairfield MT (half ours). I butcher straight from grass and can't find another butcher shop that will process for me that is close. I have had these butcher dates for 10 years so I just smile and be happy. Grass fed all natural $3.25 on the rail, 23 season will be $3.40 on the rail. Nothing finer than watching a bunch of calves eating hay from the feed line. Bud

Two things I see are:
1. Your present markup above live price is much lower for your beef ( 12 percent) than for your pork ( 73 percent ). To get the same markup on your beef as on your pork you would need $4.25 per pound hanging weight for your beef.
2. Because a quarter of beef is so much larger than a half a hog, at your current prices it takes over three times as much money for your customers to pay for a quarter of beef ( $540 ) than it does to pay for half a hog ( $160 ). At $4.25 hanging price a quarter of beef would be almost five times the cost of a half of a hog ( $765 ). That is a restrictive amount of money for most households to pay at one time and could be limiting your sales.

A local grocery store chain Fareway bills itself as a meat counter with a grocery store attached. www.farewaymeatmarket.com/about/faqs They sell meat by the pound and also sell different bundles of meat to fit what individual consumers can afford.

Could you sell your beef in smaller bundles that consumers might be better able to afford at prices that give you a respectable profit?

If you want I can post the numbers behind these estimates, but you probably already have those same figures.

have some friends that market direct both to friends by the 1/2 or 1/4 (hogs or beef)

and market to the public by the cut and $/lb. they do very well but spend alot of time driving 2 hours 2 or 3x/week to deliver to customers in Chicago area.

maybe 2 years ago their good aaamish butcher had a fire and decided to not reopen so they have been shopping for another good reliable butcher ever since. i think they may have found one but it took some time and they aren't quite as good as the old one. without a good butcher direct market doesn't work so well.

You couldnt give away a half a cow or pig around here. Your only option is to take it to the sale barn and sell it live.

You can find if you look around guys still selling weaned pigs you can raise yourself but getting a butcher appointment for a single animal has pretty much put a stop to that also.