Sam, I would sharpen your pencil and take a look at your costs to get to the end product. If you are paying the processing on that beef and selling vac wrapped/assume USDA insp you are probably losing your shirt. figure back to what you are getting net divided by the live weight of the animal and I bet you would be much better off selling live at the sale barn.

I base my retail price on 1.30/lb live weight. If I can't make money on a 1000 lb steer at 1.30 I should look for another line of work. I look at 1.30 as the price where I would sell at the sale barn rather than go thru all this trouble (except for my own use).  However since 1000 lb steers are not likely to reach $1.30/live wt lb any time soon I will stick with what I am doing.

If you are selling quality USDA processed, vac packed halves or quarters at $2.50-2.75 per packaged pound to end users I think you are probably losing money. If that is live weight it may be a different story. jmho.

Jim at Dawn