A friend of a friend owns a hobby farm and sells a few head a year, very informally. We have found 2 connections like this (we live in MN) and one guy sells $1/pound live weight. I understand this is higher than a more formal butcher arrangement, but we get bones, head, skin, and anything we want out of it which enhances the value significantly since we like to use bones and weird stuff. They are also mostly grass and forage with a little sileage over the winter.
We buy in 6 sections (we took half and someone else took half) - front and rear legs, and the ribs split down the spine. The first butchering was an absolute mess, we cut it fresh with a zip saw, I'm surprised the neighbors didn't call the cops. Had all kinds of goofy cuts, but learned quite a bit. We ended up dry aging a random, very lean and tough cut of meat. 35 days in a cleaned mini fridge. It was better than any ribeye or any dry aged piece of meat I have had a restaurant, which I learned is due to the time spent - most dry aging is about 2 weeks (up to 28 days) which does not impart much umami-type flavors. We ended up losing quite a bit of the meat to dryness as well, but there was a sufficient piece to realize that the process works at home easily.
Things we learned -
1. Use BIG cuts. We're going to buy an old used fridge on CL and drill hangers into the top so we can hang full legs. This will reduce the lost meat (bigger volume to surface area is important for less loss)
2. Don't clean up the pieces before hand. All the sinew and shitty meat on the outside protects the good meat during aging.
3. Aging is a really simple process in a fridge. 34-39 degrees the whole time, just leave it be. Even the moisture takes care of itself. Nothing else in the fridge, just meat, otherwise you get cross contamination and nasty smells.
4. Dry aged meat is easier to cut, but you still need good tools. I need either a good table clamp and a bone saw or a band saw blade dedicated to bone.
5. Minimum aging time is 30 days to get a good flavor profile. I've read you can go much higher but we'll just be testing until we find the right match for our tastes.
6. After aging, we will be cutting the steaks and freezing with the use of a food saver. Well sealed meats last a while and we eat a lot of meat anyway so this is just a better purchasing system.
It seems like there's a lot of investment there, but fridge (50), we have a nice knife already, a bone saw (50), and a clamp (free, we just bought a house and the guy is leaving his). It's not too bad of a deal for the best steaks in town.