PrestonSturges wrote:=[I'm thinking of doing a cow, (for meat not milk), this year. I would "pasture" it in my woods.
When you have a butcher cut and wrap a big deer, sometimes the "shrinkage" is about 40% and the good cuts disappear almost entirely.[/quote]
You need an honest butcher and there are plenty of them. There is shrinkage of course, you want all the major bones cut out and discarded. That can be twenty percent of the weight it had hanging in the halves. Also a butcher will not waste an hours labor trimming the last little bits off each bone using $30 dollars labor to retain $10 worth of meat. If you do it yourself you can pick the bones snowy white and cheat the dog of a good chew.