Beef dollar by segment

Every stage of the chain, priced as the market stands this week

Cow/calf

$2,244

Derived · 56.2% of $3,991 wholesale · per headWk Nov 2

Backgrounder

$316

Derived · 7.9% of $3,991 wholesale · per headWk Nov 2

Feedlot

$1,048

Derived · 26.3% of $3,991 wholesale · per headNov 2

Packer

$383

Derived · 9.6% of $3,991 wholesale · per headNov 3

Cow/calf break-even

$2,718

USDA ERS 2025 · per calf sold · full costs2025

The animal priced at each stage

1,611 lb steer · 1,028 lb carcass

Every dollar a shopper spends on beef is split five ways. Nothing here is a forecast and nothing here is a profit.

Each stage is priced at this week's market; it does not follow one animal through time.

This prices one animal at each of the five stages, using what USDA reported this week for cattle at that stage. A calf sold this week will not be fed cattle for the better part of a year, so these are the prices five different sets of cattle are fetching today — the right way to ask who is receiving what right now, and the wrong way to ask what any particular animal earned along the way.

A share is what a segment receives, not what it keeps. USDA publishes prices, not costs, for four of the five. So each link carries the break-even it has to clear — a number you can set your own against — and the one segment USDA does publish costs for, cow/calf, has them below in full.

Share of the retail dollar by segment

Drag the yield to see it move

How much of the boxed beef becomes saleable retail cutsThe one number here USDA does not publish. Move it and every share below moves.

85%

At 85% a 1,028 lb carcass yields 874 lb of cuts worth $7,208. The default of 85% is the retailer's trim loss only — the carcass-to-boxed loss is already inside the wholesale price, and counting it twice is the usual mistake.

Cow/calf

$2,244sells $2,244

Sells a 550 lb calf at $408.07/cwt

Break-even: $2,718 per calf sold (USDA ERS 2025)

Before a year of keeping the cow — feed, pasture, bull, vet, death loss.

Backgrounder

$316pays $2,244 · sells $2,560

Buys at 550 lb, sells at 750 lb for $341.37/cwt

Break-even: $1.58 per lb of gain

Before the cost of putting on 200 lb.

Feedlot

$1,048pays $2,560 · sells $3,608

Buys at 750 lb, sells at 1,611 lb for $223.98/cwt live

Break-even: $1.22 per lb of gain

Before feed. This slice covers 861 lb of gain, which can cost more than the slice itself.

Packer

$383pays $3,608 · sells $3,991

Buys the live animal, sells $3,755 of beef plus $236 of hide and offal

Break-even: $383 a head to cover plant costs

Before plant costs — labor, energy, transport — which have no USDA source.

Retailer

$3,217pays $3,991 · sells $7,208

Buys the beef wholesale, sells 874 lb of cuts

Before the store’s own costs — labor, waste, refrigeration, rent — none of which USDA publishes.

Shares are of $7,208, the retail value of one carcass at 85% yield. Four of the five links are USDA prices and do not move when you change the knob — only the retailer's slice and, because the total changes with it, everyone's percentage. None of these are profits. They are what each segment receives; only the cow/calf line below has published costs to set against it.

Cow/calf costs and returns

USDA ERS · U.S. total · 2025

Cow/calf covered its cash costs by $732 a cow and still lost $345 once its own labor and capital were charged for. That gap is mostly $570of unpaid labor — the rancher's own time, a real economic cost that never appears as a bill.

Quoting either figure alone misrepresents the sector: the cash number says the business works, the total number says it does not pay its owner. Both are USDA's.

Per cow, 2025	$
Gross value of production	1,417
Operating costsfeed $445 of it	−686
Allocated overheadincluding $570 of unpaid labor	−1,077
Over operating coststhe cash answer	+732
Over total coststhe economic answer	−345

These are per COW. The chain above is per CALF SOLD, and they are not the same unit. A herd does not sell a calf for every cow it keeps: ERS counts 98 cows producing 51 calves sold, or 0.52 per cow. So every calf that is sold carries the cost of nearly two cows.

Converted to one calf sold	$
Total cost carried by each calf sold	3,387
Less other cattle incomecull cows and yearlings, per calf sold	−668
What a calf must bring to break evenon full costs, including unpaid labor	2,718

USDA ERS Commodity Costs and Returns USDA. ERS re-surveys infrequently and indexes forward between surveys (base survey of 2018), so a recent year is modeled from an older base rather than freshly counted. The conversion above is ours Derived, using ERS's own herd counts.

Carcass make-up by primal

Solved from 142 days of USDA's own numbers

Primal	Share of carcass	Pounds on this one
Chuck	29.62%	304
Round	22.31%	229
Loin	21.26%	219
Rib	11.40%	117
Plate	7.10%	73
Brisket	4.95%	51
Flank	3.35%	34
Total	100.00%	1,028 lb

The shares sum to 100.00% and reproduce USDA's published cutout to $0.00/cwt. If these weights were wrong, the arithmetic would not land on the number USDA prints.

Weighting retail prices by how widely a cut is advertised would say a carcass is mostly ribeye, which it is not. USDA never publishes a cutting table — but its cutout is a weighted composite of the primals, and it publishes both the cutout and every primal value. Solve for the weights across 142 days and the carcass falls out.

Derived from boxed beef data, recomputed at build time rather than hardcoded, so it stays true if USDA changes the composite.

Wholesale and retail price of the same cut

Per pound · Nov 3 vs week of Oct 26

Cut	Wholesale $/lb	Advertised $/lb	Difference	Store ads
Flank steak	5.78	12.59	+118%	659
Top sirloin, boneless	4.93	8.67	+76%	1,384
Eye of round	3.90	6.81	+75%	1,239
Tri-tip roast	4.82	7.96	+65%	1,454
Strip steak, boneless	8.71	12.96	+49%	3,290
Short ribs	5.98	8.29	+39%	1,551
Ribeye, bone-in	13.96	15.07	+8%	704
Brisket	3.76	3.99	+6%	211
Ribeye, boneless	15.80	13.76	−13%	382

These retail prices are advertised — the sale rather than the shelf — and a wholesale subprimal is not a retail cut.

Where a primal becomes two kinds of retail cut — chuck into roasts and ground beef, loin into loin and sirloin — the pounds are split evenly between them. That split is an assumption, but a measured one: moving it from all-roast to all-ground shifts the retailer's share only between 48.4% and 45.3%, so unlike the yield above it does not decide the answer.

Trim and bone are lost between a subprimal and the cut in the case. Ground beef is absent because it comes from trimmings and is not one of the 42 items USDA prices wholesale.

Method

One animal priced at five stages, each at this week's market for cattle at that stage rather than followed through time. Every price is USDA USDA; the per-head arithmetic and the carcass composition are ours Derived.

A 550 lb calf at $408.07/cwt, a 750 lb yearling at $341.37/cwt, a 1,611 lb fed steer at $223.98/cwt live, and a 1,028 lb carcass at $365.23/cwt plus $14.68/cwt of hide and offal.

Feeder week of Nov 2; fed cattle Nov 2, head-weighted across every line USDA filed on the live negotiated basis, because it files more than one and picking either would be arbitrary. Live and dressed prices are never averaged together. Nothing is adjusted for inflation.

Related: feeder prices, fed cattle, boxed beef and what the label is worth. Source: USDA AMS and ERS. This site is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, the USDA.