Yesterday a local mobile slaughter unit came to pick up the pig that we’ve been raising. They were very nice and professional and handled the job in a clean, humane manner. The pig was dispatched quickly, without him ever knowing what happened to him. They then hung him on a contraption on the back of their truck, powerwashed him, and proceeded to start butchering. The only bummer is that they did this right in front of my house, and when I went out to ask them questions my son got very upset, thinking something was going to happen to me like what was happening to the pig. However, it was nice to see how cleanly and quickly they worked.
As they were cutting, I asked them about preserving the leaf lard, which is supposedly the best lard on the animal. He cut it out and gave it to me, and I am in the process of rendering it as we speak (will post about this process soon). He asked me if I wanted to save the liver and heart while he was at it, and of course I said yes, so that I can use every part of the animal possible. I’m glad I did–the liver itself was huge! About 7 pounds of meat. I hope to make a liverwurst or something out of it. If I don’t care for it, it will certainly be high quality doggy food. Any other ideas about what to do with so much liver?
After they got the pig cut into two sides, they transferred the animal into their refrigerator unit, and off it goes to the butcher. The butcher will then cut him into primal cuts, and will also cure the ham, bacon, and ham hocks. I’m not sure of the fee, but the going rate around here seems to be around .50 cents per pound for cut and wrap. If you are debating whether or not to butcher a large animal at home yourself, check out this excellent article on Antiquity Oaks’ blog that will give you plenty to think about. I’m glad that we decided to have this professionally done rather than attempting such a huge job ourselves.
Before the fellows got down to business, they expressed serious concern about the fact that we did not castrate our pig. He told me that the meat is very likely to stink when cooking it because the boar’s testes have hormones that taint the meat. I told him that the pig isn’t very old and I don’t think he’s sexually mature. He said that he’s tried it with pigs as young as six months, but never had good luck. So of course, I felt sick to my stomach, not knowing what to do. I told him to proceed with the slaughter, hoping for the best. If anything, we would have a lot of doggy food.
I never castrated him because the person that we bought him from said that there isn’t any need to. And, I remember consulting The Encyclopedia of Country Living, who mentions that if you are slaughtering at a young age, there is no need to castrate him. After the men left, I did some research on the internet and there are conflicting opinions about castrating boars. I read on a permaculture forum a story of a fellow who was going to butcher one of his hogs for market, but found out just beforehand that no one would buy it because it was not castrated, and so he went through the ugly process of castrating a huge-full grown pig. He said it was the most horrific thing to do and felt terrible about having done such a thing. There was a fellow who replied that he has a pig raising business, and he never castrates his pigs because there is only a small percentage of animals who have a gene that will stink up the meat.
Other thoughts:
Cost: the cost of raising the pig was roughly as follows: $60 for the piglet, $100 or so worth of high quality food, $50 slaughter fee, and whatever the cut and wrap fee will end up being. In the end, we will probably end up with 150 or so pounds of meat for the freezer. If we were to source out local, antibiotic, hormone-free, free ranging pork, our cost would be $5.00/pound or more. Our pig would have cost around $750 total. So we likely saved ourselves $400 or more.
Fencing: many blogs out there discuss nightmare-ish stories of their pigs constantly challenging the fencing and the pigs running around wild. We did not have any problems with him leaving, but we did have problems with him breaking out to spend time with the goats. He did this repeatedly, and eventually we just gave up trying to keep them separate. They all seem to get along just fine. I’m not recommending that you try this, as I’ve been warned to keep the goats away from a pig (pigs will go after teats and perhaps the babies of goats if they kid) but consider that if the pig is breaking out it is likely lonely.
On raising an animal that we got to know, and then having it slaughtered… this process was pretty emotional for me, as I got attached to the pig. He was very sweet, and I liked going out to give him treats and hearing his funny little snort-snort. I was conflicted about slaughtering him, and asked my husband not to have him slaughtered many times. But the truth is, we couldn’t have afforded to keep him any longer than necessary, as he’s expensive to feed, and he was getting pushy with my husband during feeding time, so much so that he would knock my husband over in anticipation of getting to his food.
If we are going to eat meat, I feel strongly that we should do it in the most humane and environmentally responsible way possible. The only way for us to reasonably do that is to raise it ourselves. And so, as much as it pains me to witness his life and death, I feel that we did the best we can, even though I feel sad.
If you are interested in reading more about the “taint” gene, check out this informative post. Make sure to read the comments. http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/09/eating-boar.html
I was drooling in anticipation of a tasty joint of pork from your pig with sage and onion balls and pureed apple!
You could make liver pate with your pigs liver. Look for a recipe on the Internet. I make it regularly. You know what is in your pate and it freezes well.
Bon appetit
I love this post! It’s important to know where your food comes from and if you eat meat, it’s important to raise it ethically and humanely. It is hard dispatching of a pig you raised yourself. My in-laws raised our pig, and he only ate organic feed and vegetables. It is the best meat we’ve ever had, and it lived a great life. It had a large pen for him to run around. I hope the meat you butchered won’t have a bad taste, I think you are right if they are young enough, it won’t be affected. This is the post I wrote about our pork. http://nycgardening.blogspot.com/2011/01/knowing-where-your-food-comes-from.html
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I am very interested to find out about the castration issue- we will be raising pastured Berkshires this summer (and we have no dogs in need of boarish meat!)
This is a really informative thoughtful post.
I’m sorry about the heartache of losing an animal. We had a very unexpected event here this morning and are also dealing with that.
Big Hug
I appreciate you sharing your pig raising experiences here, as we are considering whether or not to give it a go. I am mostly worried about it getting loose myself, as I only have one acre! I have heard that pigs are one of the most cost efficient meats that you can raise yourself, so if we can get all the contingencies ironed out, I think we’ll probably go for it.
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As the Husband is this matter, I feel conflicted. I thought that this was a great idea going into it. I would get a small pig, try my best not to get attached to it and then when the time came, be the man who took his life. I started to like the pig right away, never owning a pig, he [We named him Squealer, because he was scared to death of us when we first got him, and that was a main character in the famous George Orwell book Animal Farm.] I never knew pigs were so smart and they can show you through their eyes what they are thinking. Anyways over time, I knew it was going to be a problem for me emotionally to take this pig’s life. I also did not want to deal with the entrails, what a mess. Even dealing with a chicken was a mess for me to deal with. I did some looking around and found that a mobile butcher was $50.00. To me that was a very good trade off to me doing this. I know I could do this but I felt it would be best for everyone if someone else did this. I really enjoyed raising the pig, he was a bright spot in my daily routine, always eager to knock my ass over or check me trying to get to his food. I also liked how he communicated with all his oinks. I was surprised how well he interacted with the goats, and I know that this pig lived a better life than 90% of the pigs out there. I think moving forward, I would do this again, but I would either acquire a female and a male and establish them as the breeders and then sell the piglets and raise only one or two offspring for food. I don’t like the concept of castration of a male pig so I guess I would move the timeline to 5 months or consider a female, but, the female always strikes me as the creator of life, so that would always be tugging at my conscious. When it was all said and done we have 174 pounds of meat, which should last us more than a year.
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We just started farming in August and one of the first animals we got was a pig. She was lovely. So affectionate and fun but we did stick with it and turned her into pork when the time came. A friend came over and showed dh how to do the entire process. The pig was shot, bled and skinned and then dh cut up all the parts himself. I did all the curing myself. The bacon has been fabulous. I’m going to cure a ham for Easter this week.
It’s only been a month or so but we really miss having pigs and look forward to getting a bunch more in a couple of weeks.
You can check out my pig posts if you’d like;
http://littlehomesteadinthevalley.blogspot.com/search/label/pigs
I see my wife (Jen) has already found your blog before me! I’ll just echo her comment in that I (we) loved having our piggy (Checkers – yeah… we named her!). I would spend hours playing with her and basking in the sun with her in the hay! When it came time to dispatch, I thought for sure I would be devastated, but the process was so fascinating and educational, and the thought of all of that great, healthy meat soon won the mood over. Cleaning, dressing and butchering turned out to be a whole lot easier than I had expected, even though it was my first attempt at a larger animal.
In other news, we just adopted 8 – 3 day old piglets whose mamma got sick and stopped feeding them. Talk about ramping it up! Details are on our blog.
As for the taint, most people I talk to state the same thing in that it affects males of sexual maturity and more so in specific breeds and individuals. I really hope your meat comes back as tasty as ours. If there is an off flavour, I hope it doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth to try again – pardon the pun!
We’ve had our meat back from the processor for a few days now, and there has been no taint whatsoever. In fact, I usually notice a funky flavor in grocery store pork, which led me to believe I did not like pork. It has a far more neutral flavor than I had imagined.
Thanks for stopping by, please do keep in touch. I love hearing about other folks experiences.