How Long Does It Take To Receive A Custom Beef?
Understanding the Custom Beef Process and the Typical Timeline from Pasture to Plate
Introduction
When ordering custom beef, the time it takes for your order to be completed depends on several factors, including the producer’s schedule, the butcher facility, and your specific customization preferences.
Below is a general overview of the usual timeline and some considerations involved.
1. Initial Order and Scheduling
Once you place your order for custom beef, the producer will coordinate a butcher date with the local slaughterhouse or meat processing facility. In many cases, there may be a waiting period, especially during peak seasons (such as late summer and fall due to hunting). This initial scheduling phase can take anywhere from days, weeks, or months.
To somewhat expedite this process, some producers will establish an annual cycle where they will reserve butcher dates an entire year in advance.
For example, we at the Hashknife Ranch have a list of preferred butchers based on personal experience, customer feedback, and a desire to support local businesses. We will often reserve slots with those butchers anywhere from ten to twelve months ahead of our planned slaughter dates. This also assists customers in predicting more accurate delivery dates and knowing when to prepare their freezers for reception.
If you schedule in the fall, remember that sometimes your butcher dates are competitive with wild game processing as well.
Any seasonal event that is limited with time can cause disruptions in the scheduling at any point during the year. This is dependent upon region, culture, or butcher experience and/or their production capacity.
Recommendation: If your producer does not have a way to establish a consistent or guaranteed butcher date, you may want to look elsewhere or ask for a legitimate ‘why’.
2. Finishing Beef
If you have requested beef from an animal that is not yet fully finished (ready for butchering), the producer may need additional time to ensure the animal reaches the desired weight and/or condition.
Grain Finished Beef
Finishing beef cattle can take an additional 30 to 180 days, depending on your specifications, expectations, or request.
Other, longer finishing options may require significantly more time. If this is your situation, the finishing request needs to be an important discussion between the buyer and the producer at the time of ordering.
Grass Finished Beef
If you request grass-finished beef your ability to quickly obtain a butcher animal may increase. This is because cattle are usually already eating fresh grass at the time of inquiry and therefore it will be easier to ‘finish’.
If you expect a similar weight to grain-finished beef at the time of butchering, this will lengthen the timeline of grass-finished beef because it will take longer for the animal to grow with no supplementation to the already-established grass diet.
3. Harvest
This process usually takes about two days.
Producers often deliver butcher livestock to the slaughter facility the night before and leave them to settle down over night and reduce any potential for unnecessary adrenaline or other stress hormones that can alter meat flavor. The next day butchers will complete the process, where they remove the head, hide, legs, and entrails which results in the carcass.
The remains are stored and the weight it yields is called Carcass-, Hanging-, or Rail-Weight which butchers and producers typically use to apply and standardize the meat cost. If you think of the beef sides Rocky Balboa works out on in the movie Rocky, that is the result of this stage.
4. Aging
After harvest, the beef typically undergoes a dry-aging process to enhance tenderness and flavor.
The aging period can vary, but most butchers recommend aging beef for 14 to 21 days. Some customers may request a longer aging period—up to 30 days, or more—for maximum flavor, which extends the overall timeline.
Be cautious! There is a fine line with aging a carcass. Aging over 21 days can cause excessive loss of yield due to the additional drying, which creates an increased waste potential.
5. Cutting, Packaging, and Delivery
Following aging, the beef is cut to your specifications, packaged, frozen and made ready for pickup or delivery. This step usually takes 1 to 3 days, depending on order complexity and butcher capacity.
If you are unsure where to start with your cut order, check out our October 2025 article titled Custom Beef Cut Recommendations.
Most customers choose to pick up their own meat. However, some producers or butchers will provide delivery as a service whether free of charge or added to the bill as an extra amenity.
Delivery will often take an additional day once the order is complete. Depending upon other customer requests, longer travel routes, road conditions, etc., beef delivery may take more than one day, but usually will not exceed a week.
6. Overall Estimated Timeline
If beef is ready for processing:
2 to 4 weeks from order to completion, assuming immediate butcher availability.
If the animal requires finishing:
10 to 15 weeks total, depending on your finishing desire or request.
Special Considerations
Busier butcher seasons or specialized customization requests may add additional time.
Grass-finished beef requested at a higher carcass weight will likely add additional time.
Immediate grass-finished beef requested will provide faster product but typically yield less available consumable meat.
7. Key Factors That Can Impact Timing
Butcher backlog, limited holding capacity, or reduced output abilities
Seasonal demand
Length of aging requested
Complexity of custom cutting instructions
Availability of finished animals
Distance and delivery logistics
Conclusion
In summary, the process for custom beef completion can range from as little as a few weeks to as much as a year, depending on your options and local circumstances. To get the most accurate timeline, it is always best to consult directly with your producer.
As a peek into our operations on the Hashknife, we begin customer orders and reservations in the spring of each year. We then receive confirmations and commitments from customers in the early summer around June. Our butcher animals are started on finish feed toward the end of the summer in August or September and are usually ready for delivery to the butcher in November. Families then typically receive their custom beef throughout the month of December.
Smaller producers, like us, require longer lead times and preparations to best support our customers. The key to locally sourced beef is to stay in communication, understand the timelines, and ask questions to ensure you get precisely what you envision.
Good luck with your order and, remember, Buy Local!
