Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

Can anyone explain and clarify the weights I would expect from a Dexter, and also some of the terms used?

I've been told that as a rough guide an animals dead weight is two thirds or the live weight and the boned out weight is about one third of the live weight. So, a 200kg steer would have a dead weight of 133kg and a boned out weight of 66kg. Is this about right?

Also, I see a lot a reference to a killing out percentage. What is this? Does it refer to the boned out weight as a percentage of the deadweight (66/133 in the above example).

Many thanks for any help you can give me on this.

Simon

Killing out percentage is deadweight divided by liveweight, so your 200kg steer would have a KO% of 66.5% which is a good weight. KO is usually 55 - 65% depending upon the breed.

Boning out is about 66% of the deadweight, so 87.78kg of a 133kg carcass all boned out meat.

As far as i know you would be lucky to get that KO for a normal beef beast. surely a 200kg lw would be more 110kg.

boned out weight would be around 1/3 of the live weight. but robs figure sounds more accurate.

d

Our last steer was 225kg on weighband live, 128kg dead, ie 56.9%. Don't have a total weight for yeild of sellable beef.

Duncan

I've got stats from over 100 Dexters from a number of farms.

Deadweight to liveweight averaged 53%, with very little variation.

Boned Out to Deadweight averaged 61% with a lot of variation ranging from 52% to nearly 70% for a bull. But mainly, they were around the 61%.

Average Boned Out to Liveweight came in at 32%.

All figures exclude offal and most were non-shorts. Figures for shorts were usually not as good with some exceptions.

Our average of beef to sell is consistently 64% / 65% of deadweight, the info has been very helpful when working out monthly income from beef.

Alison Kirk
Boram Dexters