Step 1: Converting an animal into a carcass
- Dressing percentage (DP) relates the weight of the carcass to the weight of the live animal and is calculated as: (Carcass Weight ÷ Live Weight) × 100.
- This can be affected by many things (such as gut fill, fatness, mud on the hide, or shorn versus unshorn). Very fat animals have higher dressing percentages than light very lean animals.

Step 2: Making cuts out of a carcass
This is where it starts to get tricky to predict just how much meat the carcass will yield because that depends largely on how you order the meat cut.
- Bone-in or boneless? Opting for boneless cuts will reduce your total pounds of meat returned.
- Do you want ground meat with 10% fat or 20% fat? Lower fat content ground meat will result in more discarded fat, thus reduced total pounds of product received.
- Was the animal overly fat to begin with? If the animal was fat from the start, more fat will need to be trimmed away, thus reducing total pounds of meat returned.

Step 3: Aging and further processing (optional)
- The longer a whole carcass ages (hangs), the more moisture it loses due to evaporation, thus losing weight. Instead of aging an entire carcass for > 2 weeks, ask if your butcher is willing to age just the middle meats aged.
- Ordering bacon? Cured hams? Smoked sausages? Applying a heat process to meat cuts will also reduce the total yield of meat returned from an animal. Different products have different yields.