FAQ

You will pick up the beef from our specialty processor, Foothills Custom Meats in High River, about 30 minutes south of Calgary. They are open until 5pm Mon-Fri. 1pm Sat. This saves you money by avoiding a delivery charge.
Click here for a map and their contact details

Please remember to bring your own boxes or (preferably) coolers, since Foothills has no boxes to bring your beef home in.

Foothills only accepts check or debt.

Foothills Processors will call you to say that your beef is ready for pick up. Please pick up your beef as soon as possible please.

Please bring the invoice that is sent to you as it has your order details.

Please leave a cheque made out to A 7 Ranche Ltd.  The price is $3.25 on the carcass weight which works out to about $6.50/lb or 14.32kg for the beef that you bring home after you have paid Foothills for the processing. You will not be allowed to take you beef home without payment.

Foothills charge $.89/lbs. for processing plus any extras like patties, sausage and jerky. They take checks and debt but not credit cards. Foothills staff will bring your order out to your vehicle and help you put your beef into your coolers or boxes from their baskets.

Thank you so much for buying our beef. We hope you enjoy cooking and eating the beef. If there are any problems or questions let us know. Also let us know if you want a beef next year and we will make out an order for you.

Just phone John Cross at the A7 Ranche on 403 646-5592. Please note we can only sell within Alberta since our processor is only provincially licensed. Also note that since our beef is truly grassfed and grassfinished, it is seasonal. You can order anytime of the year.

A7 Ranche beef costs $3.25/lb for “dressed weight” – that’s the price of the hanging beef carcass plus $0.89 for cutting, wrapping and freezing. It’s approximately $6.50/lb or 14.32/kg of meat in the freezer, across the whole range of cuts. Doing it this way (instead of pricing per lb of wrapped beef) has a big advantage to you: it allows you to have your meat custom cut with just the right amount of fat, bone, hamburger patties or straight ground beef that you want. This affects the weight of the meat produced from that cow. Patties, jerky and sausage are an extra charge.

We use the old-fashioned method of ‘dry aging’ – that’s hanging for 21 days in the cooler instead of 24 hours as with supermarket beef. It produces about 8% shrink (water loss), which intensifies the flavour. All good things take time – there are no shortcuts to premium quality.

A typical half would be approximately 275-325 lbs dressed weight, giving 180-220 lbs of of meat in the freezer. So it would cost about $1,125 – $1,330 – about $6.50/lb or 14.32/kg of meat in the freezer, across the whole range of cuts from premium steaks to roasts to ground beef. So, if you split a half with a friend, you’d pay about $560 – $670 for around 90 – 110 lbs of beef.

It depends on the weight of the cow, but typically about 180-220 lbs of meat for a half, depending on how you like it cut (amount of fat and bone in the cut). For example, many people like to keep bones for soup stock, or as dog chews (these can be custom cut to fit your dog, at no extra charge).

No, this is the minimum order size. However, many of our customers split a half with a friend, neighbor or colleague. A half splits down easily to divide steaks, hamburger and roasts between two parties. Usually, a couple would eat a quarter in a year, while a family of four would eat a half.

Our beef is local and natural, and therefore seasonal. You can order anytime of the year, but the beef is only available from June to September, while quantities last. Why? Because our cattle are grass-fed and grass finished, nature’s way. Only in summer is the grass lush enough to “finish” (fatten) a cow nicely without resorting to feeding grain. We advise you place your order early to reserve your half.

At typical deep freeze temperatures of -18, the beef will last up to 12 months.

A typical half – again, this depends on the individual animal – would be around 8 cubic feet. A typical quarter would be about 4 cubic feet. Freezers range greatly in size from 5-25 cubic feet but a standard chest freezer would often be around 12 cubic feet.

Absolutely – many of our customers just find a friend, neighbor or colleague to split a half with since our minimum order size is a half. A half splits down easily to divide steaks, hamburger and roasts between two parties. Often, we find that a family of four will eat a half themselves in a year, while a couple will eat about a quarter, so they split a half with someone else.

If you want to get a bigger freezer, Trail Appliances has offered an exclusive deal for A7 Ranche customers to buy a freezer. For a 7% discount, phone Cliff Johnson (403 342-0900) of Trail Appliances Calgary, quoting the A7 Ranche discount of 7%.

No, you don’t need to have any special knowledge at all. Our processor, Foothills Custom Meats, is very good at finding out what you want just by asking a few simple questions – like how big you want your roasts, how many steaks per package and how many pounds of hamburger per package.

Yes, because you choose how the A7 beef is cut.  You can have your meat cut to suit the kind of cooking you like – for example, large or small steaks, bone left in or taken out, more roasts versus more steaks, more ground beef or maybe more hamburger patties.

On the A7, we co-exist with pretty much every kind of wild animal native to the foothills: grizzlies and black bears, cougars and wolves, ungulates like moose, elk, mule and white-tailed deer; predatory birds like golden and bald eagles and hawks, waterfowl like geese and pelicans, songbirds, and an abundance of small mammals, like skunks, coyotes, gophers, muskrat and beaver. Check out our photo gallery!

The A7 Ranche is a 13,000 acre ranch in the Porcupine Hills southwest of Nanton, Alberta, Canada. The Porcupine Hills are a part of the famous eastern slopes foothills of the Canadian Rockies. The eastern slopes are a critical ecosystem for North America since these large grasslands capture, filter, store and release the source water for Western Canada all the way to the Hudson’s Bay.