Live Weight vs. Hanging Weight vs. Packaged Weight: What Buyers Should Know
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If you’ve ever shopped for goat meat directly from a farmer or specialty supplier, you’ve probably heard terms like live weight, hanging weight, and packaged weight. Understanding these can help you compare prices and know exactly what you’re paying for.
Live Weight – Before Processing
Definition: This is the weight of the goat while it’s alive, before any processing.
- Includes everything: hide, head, hooves, internal organs, and blood.
- This is the starting point most farmers use to estimate how much meat you’ll get.
Example:
A healthy meat goat might weigh 70 lbs live weight before slaughter.
Hanging Weight – After Slaughter, Before Butchering
Definition: Also called carcass weight, this is the weight after the animal has been slaughtered, bled, and had its head, hide, hooves, and internal organs removed.
- Hanging weight is usually 50–60% of live weight for goats.
- The carcass is cooled in a refrigerated environment to allow for proper aging before butchering.
Example:
A 70 lb live goat might have a hanging weight of 38–42 lbs.
Packaged Weight – Ready to Cook
Definition: This is the total weight of the meat after it’s been cut, trimmed, and packaged.
- Includes the meat you take home, plus bones (if it’s bone-in cuts).
- Trimming excess fat, removing certain bones, or portioning into stew meat can reduce total weight.
- Packaged weight is usually 65–75% of hanging weight.
Example:
From a 70 lb live goat → 40 lb hanging weight → you might get 26–30 lbs packaged meat.
Why This Matters for Pricing
If you’re buying goat meat at a grocery store or from a butcher that prices by hanging weight, you’re paying for the fat and trimmings that get discarded during processing.
At Two Good Goats, we price based on final packaged weight after trimming the fat, so the price you see is for the meat you’ll actually take home and cook.
That means even if our per-pound price looks higher, it’s often less expensive than what you’d get at a grocery store once you compare the true cost per pound of usable meat.
The Bottom Line
Knowing the difference between live weight, hanging weight, and packaged weight helps you make better buying decisions and truly compare costs.
At Two Good Goats, we keep it simple: we source directly from farms, process quickly for freshness, and price based only on the meat you’ll enjoy—not the parts you’ll throw away.