moo.
Internet god, Tom Coates, posted a question on metafilter regarding the number of meals you could make from one beef cow.
It seems the answer is somewhere between
Average beef animal, weighed full, 1200 lbs., some bone-in and some boneless steaks and roasts, closely trimmed, regular ground beef, yields somewhere between 450 and 600 lbs of beef on average. Of course, that includes some organ meats (tongue, liver). Multiply that x 16oz and divide that by 8oz portions, and you see that a whole cow could last you well over a year.
Yep. Now you know. Once a year, my dad traded 1/2 steer to the butcher for processing the meat. That left us with about 300lbs of beef in our freezer. Now you know why my folks had 2 freezers.