1600 patties per cow is a value I’ve heard since I was a kid in the 70s. It wasn’t McD specifically. Maybe the cows have grown fatter or the patties smaller over the decades.
Anyway, my point was, hundreds of millions of burgers doesn’t deplete the country of cattle heads. It was an remark about orders of magnitude.
I’d say that McD’s patties are super small. Your average patty will be around 6-8oz, so 170-230g, which is much closer to your initial number of 1600 parties per cow.
That count is way off.
An average cow is 600kg, and yields 36-48% in pure meat, so around 250kg.
McDonald’s standard patty is 45g, while larger patties - say, like, the Quarter Pounder - go up to 120g.
Presuming 2/3 of all burgers per cow are regular, and 1/3 are Quarter Pounder size, then we have a simple formula to solve:
2x*0.045kg + x*0.120kg = 250kg
That makes X approximately 1190, so the total number of burgers is ~3570, over double of your calculations.
1600 patties per cow is a value I’ve heard since I was a kid in the 70s. It wasn’t McD specifically. Maybe the cows have grown fatter or the patties smaller over the decades.
Anyway, my point was, hundreds of millions of burgers doesn’t deplete the country of cattle heads. It was an remark about orders of magnitude.
I’d say that McD’s patties are super small. Your average patty will be around 6-8oz, so 170-230g, which is much closer to your initial number of 1600 parties per cow.
Oh yeah, those cows are party animals 🙂
Bold of you to assume McD’s patties are pure meat. Probably half the weight is extra fat and pink slime, so you can easily double that.
Maybe in the US, in Australia they are 100% Angus beef
That was my take also.