whole hog!

[doc henderson]

well I kept hearing about hog farmers with stock getting too big an no where to go.  we got 2 hogs at 250#s for 40 cents a pound or 100 bucks each.  My buddy Dallas, and his friend Wes who got the pigs and his son, his uncle whom had butchered a lot of pigs.   



 

dispatched, bled, and getting cleaned.



 



 

four hours to butcher.  took the bellies to a processor to make bacon.  cut off the shoulders, hams, and ribs.  left the loins on the spine.  ribs in the freezer, rest on the smoker the next day after soaking overnight in a apple juice sugar and sat mix.  on the smoker at 5 am.



 



 

the bacon process is an extra $1.75 a pound.  I have smoked my own, but my wife likes it sliced nice and packaged nice.  at 6 pm the biggest ham was at 202 degrees, so we pulled it all off.  let it rest for an hours and then pulled out bones, had a little for a snack, and then we all packaged our own.  I did the food saver vacuum bags.  had some today stir fried with some salsa to warm it up.  very good.  lot of work.  the second hog did go faster than the first.

[barbender]

I've been meaning to get one of these cheap hogs, too. Haven't had the time though. It's an absolute shame that farmers are having to euthanize their animals with no market for them.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

   My wife raised pigs as a kid and hates them. We have had all kinds of wild and domestic animals here but no pig. I like the idea of smoking and storing the meat as described and I have a 4' long smoker I brought back from Saudi and a bunch of fresh cut red oak slabwood and a hickory log on the lot to process so I may have to start looking for one too. My only concern is it has been awful warm here lately. I do have a young friend a mile or so down the road with a big cooler though so I'll keep my eyes open.

[doc henderson]

we did not hang them for long, only to bleed.  then did the apple juice with salt and sugar, in a cooler with 40 pounds of ice.  the meat internal was 40 degrees in the am.  stuff in the freezer overnight, was stiff but movable.  (the loins)

[A-z farmer]

Wow Doc that is a good price .
6 week old pigs go for 100 and up here and they have to bee feed over 120 dollars for feed to 250 pounds butcher weight .I have been raising pigs from farrow to finish since I was 8 years old and when I started out 6 week old piglets were 25 each .
I know the butcher shops around me in the north east are booked for this year.

[sawguy21]

When is dinner ready? Pork is my favorite.

[Skip]

Wow, good price ordered one last week same size, almost twice the price . Was glad to get it .

[doc henderson]

our guys are having trouble getting them to market with processors shut down. selling them cheap rather than shooting them and burying in a hole.  sad.

[doc henderson]

the farmer would normally get about 300 bucks for these animals each.  so $200 is still a good price, less than wholesale.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I remember 10-12 years ago we had a situation like that where it cost the farmers more to transport the pigs than they got for them at auction and they were shooting them in the fields. I think we were buying 150-200 lb hogs for $25-$30 or so. No difference in the price of pork at the store but the farmers weren't getting the difference. I think the big producers had contracted with big farmers and were still paying normal prices but the small unaligned farmers took a beating.

[Nebraska]

If you can gut skin and process a deer you can do the same for a pig. If you have folks around  unable to move hogs to market because of plant closures, they would rather sell them to you than put therm down for nothing. Good On you Doc. 
Have a neighbor processing party if you need help... all our local butchering capacity is booked into next year. 

[Al_Smith]

It would be a good time to buy some inexpensive pork on the hoof . In my case with just two of us and not having the freezer capacity not a good option .

[caveman]

My daughter has a leftover show hog that is going to run out of feed in a day or so.  I may butcher it tomorrow afternoon but its is HOT, darn warm here.  My 83 y/o neighbor told me he saw the thermometer at 96° today.  If we do kill it tomorrow we will have to work fast (kill, bleed, gut, peel, half, quarter, ice).  It has been a while since I have butchered anything.  I paid $175 for this one when it was about 40 lbs. back in September.

I'm glad some of these animals are not going to waste.  A guy I know who has a slaughter house is looking for folks to hire, he'll train inexperienced.  He is a busy as can be.

Doc, based on the way y'all are dressed, the temperature is just about right there.  I also like to hit them with the pressure washer prior to butchering them.

[doc henderson]

we all trust the processors, but if we saw a clump of 3 hairs, someone grabbed it and pulled it out.  cleanliness is next to Godliness!  most of the heat is in the organs, so i agree with your plan.  It took us about 4 hours total.  we did a lot of washing after the butcher and pulling the stringy fat and blood vessels.  soaked in apple just in a big cooler and 40 pounds of ice,  or got frozen.  our processor that is booked till Jan., was still able to take the belly meat and cure and smoke it, slice and package it as bacon.  so that took some work off us.  the ribs are in the freezer.  the hams and shoulder, loins, all got smoked and into vacuum bags about 1 pound each.  so from 500 pounds of hog, we got 80 pounds of pulled pork, 40 pound of bacon, and a slab of ribs

[caveman]

Well, we had homeschool ag here today.  We got the hog butchered and he is on ice now.  It took my daughter, another ag teacher's daughter (she was in my class) and myself about an hour to get it parted out and on ice.  

It has been a long time since I have butchered anything and it showed today.  It was like rookie day on the farm.  If I were to do another tomorrow, it would be much quicker and efficient.

I'll probably cut and wrap it tomorrow.

[Sedgehammer]

the second hog did go faster than the first.

🤔 one wood've thought you guyz were too full to eat the 2nd one faster......

[tule peak timber]

Wonderful post !!! I'm hungry !!!

[petefrom bearswamp]

Im salivating too.
Wish I could get one here at that price.
My only experience was 40 plus years ago raising 2 and butchering both selling one and keeping the other for my family.
Had butchered plenty of deer but this was my first with hogs.
I sent for the USDA bulletin called "lets cut meat"
I still have it.
It was a diagram with cut on the dotted lines.
Was very easy to do.
I think the farrows cost me 15 bucks, one barrow, one gilt.
Brought them home in a burlap bag in the back seat of my wife's ford LTD sedan
We processed  all except the hams.
Got the Bacon process from the mother earth news.
Good fare!
I just saw that Tyson has closed another pork plant in I think Iowa due to 500 workers getting covid

[aigheadish]

My neighbor found a guy who is selling pigs. I've committed to buying one but I've never done so before. This guy is also processing them but I'm not entirely sure what that means other than I guess he likes to make sausages. 

Is there a good way to describe what cuts I want? I didn't realize bacon had a separate process beyond cutting it bacon shaped but I guess thatakes sense. 

I'm interested in pork for pulled pork, sausages and bacon. I'd imagine I'll get some porkchops too and some ribs. Is that what I should ask for? How do I find a bacon processor? 

[barbender]

Is he processing it, as in cutting and wrapping it, or just slaughtering?

As far as cuts, about the only option I can think of for the bacon is how thick it is sliced. Some processors might have options for seasoning and smoking wood.

 Other than that, your chops, ribs, what about hams? And what size do you want your roasts cut? A lot of this will depend on your processor, some will be bare bones basic and others offer a lot of options. I've cut a few pigs for personal use, they are probably the easiest animal to butcher imo. Not to big to handle, and everything will make sausage worst case scenario😊