Chicken Yield Calculator
For poultry, the take-home number is usually the dressed bird — whole or cut up — not boneless meat. Processors remove the head, feet, and organs, and you keep the carcass, bones and all. A broiler typically comes home at about 70% of its live weight.
Type in the animal's live weight and the amounts the processor removes — Head & feet, Organs — auto-fill at typical shares for a chicken. Adjust any of them for a closer estimate and the take-home weight updates as you type.
Your chicken
What the processor removes (auto-filled, in lb)
Estimated dressed weight
Estimated weight
—lb
of live weight
Enter a live weight to see the math.
- Head & feet
- Organs
- Take-home
Estimates only — actual yield depends on cut style, fat and trim, moisture loss while aging, and what you ask the processor to keep. Confirm the expected weight with your processor before you send an animal.
From live weight to take-home
Every pound the processor removes, start to finish. Each ribbon is a loss leaving the carcass and every bar is drawn to scale, so you can see at a glance where your animal's weight actually goes.
Updates as you change the inputs. Estimates only — confirm the expected weight with your processor.
Where the weight goes
Live weight never turns into take-home weight in one step. Here's each stage where pounds come off, using your numbers.
Live weight
— lb
Take-home
— lb
—
-
1
Dressed weight
Head, feet & organs removed
— lost
leaves — lb
Slaughter and dressing remove the head, feet, and organs. The bones stay in, so the bird you take home — whole or cut into parts — is the dressed carcass at about 70% of live weight.
What affects how much meat you take home
- Cut style. Boneless cuts mean more trimmed-out bone and less take-home weight; bone-in roasts and steaks weigh more.
- Trim and fat. A tight trim — or grinding the fat into burger — keeps more weight than cutting it all away.
- Shrink. Meat loses moisture while hanging and aging, which lowers the final weight.
- What you keep. Some people take the liver, heart, and other organs home instead of leaving them with the processor.
Find a USDA-inspected processing plant near you
Raising animals to sell shares? See custom-exempt processors who can process under your brand.
Chicken yield questions
What does "dressed weight" mean for a chicken?
Dressed weight is what's left after slaughter, plucking, and removing the head, feet, and organs — the whole bird you take home, bones and skin included, typically around 70% of its live weight.
How much will a 6 lb broiler weigh dressed?
With the defaults on this page, a 6 lb broiler comes to about 4.2 lb dressed: the head and feet (about 0.4 lb) and the organs (about 1.4 lb) are removed. Dressed birds are usually taken home whole or cut into parts.
Why is poultry's yield higher than beef or pork?
You take home the whole carcass — bones and all — for poultry, while the red-meat calculators on this site estimate boneless cuts after the bones are removed. That's why a chicken's share of live weight looks larger.
Where can I get poultry processed?
Search the directory for chicken and poultry processors near you and ask how they sell birds — whole dressed, cut into parts, or both.