Household planning math — servings, ounces, and species mix into an annual pounds target.
Count as 0.5 adult
Lb per person per year
US average: 264 lb
98 lb
Household total per year
244 lb
Red meat
98 lb
Poultry
73 lb
Pork
49 lb
Fish / other
24 lb
Half beefs needed
Red meat / 300 lb take-home
0.33×
Whole pigs needed
Pork / 175 lb take-home
0.28×
Plan whole-animal purchases on a yearly budget. If your household eats ~300 lb of red meat, a single half beef covers the year. If you eat more poultry than red meat, lean harder on chicken shares or layers of your own.
Children treated as 0.5 adult equivalents is a rough proxy — adjust servings if teens eat like adults.
lb/person/year = (servings_per_week × oz_per_serving × 52) ÷ 16
Freezer Capacity
How much meat fits in 7, 15, 20 cubic feet — sized to half beef, whole pig, whole lamb.
Bulk Meat Savings
Compare a whole-animal purchase to grocery retail — see the real savings and freezer payback.
Protein Needs
Daily protein target by bodyweight, activity, and goal — with breakpoints from sedentary to athletic.
Enter how many beef, pork, chicken, and lamb servings each person eats per week and the typical cooked-portion size in ounces. The calculator converts to raw pounds (raw is heavier than cooked because of moisture loss), multiplies by 52 weeks, multiplies by household size, and gives a pounds-per-year target by species. Use this number to size a freezer order — for example, a couple eating beef four times a week at 6 oz cooked needs about 150 lb of beef a year, or a quarter beef.
Bulk-meat buying only makes sense if you understand annual consumption. Buying a whole hog because it is on sale, then realizing your family eats pork twice a month, means freezer-burned product in 18 months. Conversely, families who eat meat daily often buy too small — a quarter beef sounds like a lot until you do this math and see it lasts six months. The number anchors every other bulk-buying decision.
Cooked-to-raw ratio is roughly 0.75 for whole-muscle cuts (4 oz raw cooks to 3 oz) per USDA FoodData Central. The calculator uses 0.75 by default. Servings include all eating occasions where that protein is the main item — sandwiches, soup, casseroles, plated dinners — but does not double-count broths or stocks. National average is ~58 lb beef and ~50 lb pork per person per year per USDA ERS, but high-meat households can run 2-3x higher. Use a year of grocery receipts as your starting estimate, not a guess — the number is more often a surprise than people expect.