My family splits a cow with another family. Its awesome. So much beef.
When working full time and trying to keep the cows in hay got to be too much, we had all our three cows butchered--two of them went totally into hamburger--and it was THE BEST hamburger I've ever eaten.
And of course every time we butchered a cow, my husband would relate the story of the time he and his brother-in-law decided to butcher a cow they'd raised together so that each could keep a half. As they stood over their respective sides of beef with knives keenly sharpened for the task at hand, the brother-in-law looked up and asked, with a totally straight face: "How in the heck are we supposed to know where to cut when there ain't no dotted lines?"