I should have said that the cutting and wrapping the entire cow was close to $500....still seems very high to me....
a quarter of beef generally yields approximately 100-140 Lbs of finished product. Nearly 50% of that is ground beef, the rest includes steaks and roast. That works out to be around 5 bucks per lb. or less.
at $25/hour that would be 2 1/2 days to cut up and wrap a full cow....not including the trays and butcher paper or cleanup.
Doesn’t sound totally unreasonable. Question is what do you think the hourly rate for a butcher should be?