Introduction

Whether you raise your pig or get a pig from your local farmer, you may wonder what you can expect when taking your pig to the butcher and what to expect when your pig returns from the butcher. Are you curious how much meat you get from a 300 lb pig when you turn it into the butcher? Or maybe you’re wondering how much meat you can expect when you process your own hog.

Knowing where your pork is coming from is very important. If you raise your own, then you know exactly what went into producing that pork. Even if you buy from your local farmer, you can still talk with them about what goes into feeding the pigs. If organic or purely pasture-raised is essential, you can find those operations. Or you may want pork and want to support your local farmer. Either way, you can know what goes into raising your pork!

Well, let’s get right into it and see what’s what. I’ve discussed the cost of raising pigs in some videos on our YouTube Channel. You can find our multiple meat haul videos HERE on our Meat Hauls from Animals We Have Raised playlist. Most of these are pork haul videos, but there are also beef and soon-to-be turkey and chicken haul videos. This post will discuss how much meat/product you will put in your freezer.

We will use the last pig we got from the butcher, which has a hanging weight of 234 pounds. That means this pig probably had a live weight of around 334 lbs. In this post, we will detail what cuts of meat we go and how much of those cuts we get from the butcher.  

Raising Your Own Pig

Raising your pig for meat brings a sense of satisfaction like no other. It all starts with careful planning and commitment. We will be adding a lot of pig topics on this site, so be sure to stay up on the PIG CATEGORY or other is also THIS ARTICLE here now. In this section, we’ll explore the advantages of embarking on this fulfilling journey and share valuable insights into raising pigs, from choosing the ideal breed to tending to their diet and overall welfare. 

Pigs can be easy or difficult to raise. Generally speaking, we raise pigs by giving them a vast area to live in for six months when they are with us. And during those six months, they can eat as much food as they want. What you feed them can also be adjusted. Do you wish to provide non-GMO feed or just regular feed? You can restrict their feed to make a bit leaner pork. But we elect to keep feed in front of them 24/7 and water. 

We leave large feeders full, which generally only need to be filled every three days, allowing us to be relatively hands-off and not become a time-consuming daily chore. We also have a 55-gallon barrel that holds water for them with pig-drinking nipples attached to the bottom of the barrel. Again, it only needs filling about every three days.

Preparing for the Butcher

You may want to breed and raise your pigs. But what we do is we get piglets that are about eight weeks old. Then, we raise them for another six months, feeding them as previously discussed. When we take a pig to the butcher, they are roughly eight months old and have a live weight of around 300 lb.

If you do not have a scale, a tape measure is one of the main ways to guesstimate your pig’s weight. This method is usually reasonably accurate, within 25 lb. You would measure the pig’s girth from its armpit up and around the pig. And you would also measure the length from the tip of the ear to the tip of the tail. You would then multiply the girth times the girth and get your answer. Then multiply that answer by the length and get that answer. You would then divide that number by 400 and come up with what your live weight would be.

Example

Girth = 50 inches
Length = 40 inches
50×50= 2500
2500×40=100,000
100,000 \ 400 = 250 lbs LIVE weight.

Different sources will tell you different things, but once you have your live weight, you can guess your hanging weight. You’re hanging weight should be about 70% of your live weight. So you would take the 250 lb and multiply it by 70%, which will give you a hanging weight of 175.

You can also do what we do many times. We’ve started eyeballing the pigs, and we also know that it’s six months before they’re ready to enter the butcher. So once the pig is returned to us from the butcher, we figure out the percentages and the live weight. This last pig we sent to the butcher, the one we will discuss below, had a hanging weight of 234 lb. You take that 234 lbs, divide it by 70%, and come up with a live weight of 334 lbs.

Getting everything ready for your pig to go to the butcher is very important. It would be best to have many things ready when you take your pig to the butcher.

For starters, you need to make sure you have an appointment. We messed up our very first year and did not make an appointment; instead, we just showed up with our pig. The processor that we used was very generous and let us drop the pigs off anyway, but that was a huge mistake on our part and we did not plan and understand what was happening correctly. It was a big misunderstanding. I thought the processor had said just to bring pigs on two different days of the week. I did not realize he was just stating those were the days but that appointments were also needed.

 The next important thing, and even the most important, is to be ready to load your pigs into a trailer. Or you could have somebody get them for you, which is going to cost you more money. Either way, you will probably be involved in loading your pigs, which can be very difficult to load. On top of being stubborn, they are incredibly strong, and it could even become a dangerous situation for you and the pigs.

 What we do is park a trailer out for the pigs about a week in advance of our butcher date. We close off all other shelters that they may be using to sleep in so that they naturally want to go inside the trailer as their shelter. And then, come the morning that they’re going to be taken to the butcher, we walk up quietly to the trailer and close the doors with them in their sleeping. This has by far been the absolute easiest method of trailering pigs that we have ever done.

 We have had to do some variations of this where the butcher only gives us a day or two notice because we need an actual appointment. So what we try to do then is still try to do the same thing, but we’ve had to fight a little bit with the pigs to get them to load. And that always sucks because you want this to be as stressless as possible for the pigs.

 So, another method I have done is to make a shoot out of pig panels leading to the trailer. Try to encourage the pigs into the shoot by dumping some food, or they love chicken eggs, or whatever you can think of, and lure them into the chute. And then I play leapfrog with t-posts going in between the hog panels. The T post, usually three or four high, acts as a barrier, so they can’t return the way they just came from. They can only move forward. This is a much slower method because, generally speaking, they’re not willing to get into the trailer, but if you’re patient, they will eventually. This method has also worked very well for me.

Pig At The Butcher Process

Now that your pigs are loaded and you’re taking your pig to the butcher, you might wonder what you can expect next. I can only speak to my experiences with going to about five different processors, but it’s all very similar.

It’s helpful if you know your butcher and your butcher knows what you expect from how your animals get treated. Nobody wants to raise an animal for six months only to have them abused by the butcher. I find there needs to be a little bit of grace in this, at least to a certain degree, because the pigs or whatever animal you’re dropping off don’t know the new environment. They’re not usually willing to jump out of the trailer and run inside to a pen.

But again, knowing your butcher and how your butcher treats animals is always a huge plus. I’ve always been happy with how I see our meat processing shop get animals unloaded. I’ve been to a couple of other butchers where I was not so happy.

At the processor, you are going to back your trailer up to a livestock shoot that your butcher has. In every experience I have had, the butcher’s employees will get in the trailer and encourage your livestock to get out of the trailer. Some are incredibly great and gentle, while others could be better and more gentle. I had a butcher ask me once if I was okay if he used a cattle prong to move the pigs, and I told him no. I was not happy with that at all, so they didn’t use one.

Quantity and Cuts

Here, we’re going to get into the good parts. Talking about what cuts of meat we got out of our 234 lb hanging weight Pig and what that translates into the weights of different cuts. This will vary from butcher to butcher. Again, knowing where you are having your pig processed is a good thing.

Pork Chops (Smoked)

We will start off with pork chops. We always get our pork chops smoked. They taste very similar to a slice of ham when cooked this way. Our butcher does offer smoking of pork chops. You don’t have to get them smoked, and I could smoke them myself at home, but we choose to have it done at the processing shop.

Loins

If you are unfamiliar with the different cuts of meat from a pig and want the pork loin, then you will not get pork chops. We find that pork chops stretch out the meals better for us than loins. The pork chop is the loin, just with a bone for the most part. So we did not get any pork loin.

Shoulder Roast

Regarding shoulder roast, this is the cut of meat you will often use for pulled pork or other fantastic dishes. We always get the fresh shoulder roast, meaning it was not smoked or cured. I like to do that part myself with the shoulder roasts.

Hams

Regarding the hams, you can have a couple of different options. We always get our smoked at our butchers because they do a fantastic job with it. With our butcher, you can get the ham fresh or smoked, whole cut in half or cut in thirds, center cut, or all sliced. We usually get our ham smoked and cut in half. But with this large hog, we decided to have it smoked and cut into thirds.

Bacon

Everybody’s favorite subject when it comes to pork is bacon! We have done a few different things when asking for bacon from our butcher. In the past, my butcher has been willing to give me the whole pork belly fresh to make my own bacon. I have done that twice or three times, and we absolutely love it. This time, we asked for the bacon smoked and sliced for us, and it came in 1 lb packages.

Ribs

Don’t ever pass up on the ribs. These aren’t your baby back ribs you would get out of the supermarket, but they are fantastic, prepared the same way in the smoker and devoured. Most butchers offer ribs. I would think this would be standard, and I can not understand why a butcher would not offer the ribs.

Fresh Ground

So everything else is going to go to fresh ground. And with all your fresh ground, you can elect to have different things done with it. You can keep all the fresh ground if you want, or you can have a percentage of that go towards some sausage, bratwurst, or other things that the butcher may offer. 

Sausage

Typically, you can have many different options with sausages. Mild sausage, hot sausage, bratwurst, sausage links, sausage patties, you name it, you can have it done. What we do is usually get the mild sausage. Links and patties will cost you more, so we get the 1 lb package of sausage.

Ham Hocks

Ham Hocks are the lower part of the leg. Think about the area between the knee and the ankle; this is the ham hock. Some excellent meat on here in the ham hocks are perfect for using in a soup or something along those lines.

Organs

 As far as I know, most butchers will give you whatever organs you want. We always get the heart and liver, although I will be honest and tell you that we struggle to use those.

Customization and Special Requests

Many butchers have a set way they butcher, which can be a drawback of taking your pig somewhere to be butchered instead of butchering it yourself. After many years, we still take our pigs to the butcher and are happy with what we get. But there are some things we have to ask for specifically. And there are some things we know our Butcher will not do.

Keep in mind most butchers charge more for smoked products. So you will pay per pound of all smoked meat. This includes the bacon, ham, shoulder roasts, or anything else you may want.

Our Butcher does not just give you the pig fat. We have to request the fat separately. And yes, we love getting the fat back to render it down into the lard we use almost daily.

Some other options that butchers may have for you are to keep the snout, the feet, or even the jowls. You may even also be able to keep the whole head. Our Butcher does not offer this, which is just one consequence of not butchering ourselves. This may also be dictated by whether or not your Butcher is a USDA butchering site. While the Butcher that we use is a prevalent one in our area, but it is not a USDA facility, so that may limit them on what they are or are not able to offer us.

Storage

Another great thing about our butcher is that they vacuum seal everything. We end up paying a bit more for this, but we don’t mind. There are butchers in our area that use butcher paper and other methods. How your pork is packaged may be important to you. You could also vacuum seal it yourself after getting it back frozen. Or whatever you want to do if you are unhappy with how it is packaged at the processor.

And of course, we can’t skip over the fact that you can also can your pork. We have canned quite a bit of pork before and loved the results. Canned pork chops, fresh roasts, pulled pork, and pork in soups such as this recipe – Preserve the Flavor: Awesome Recipe for Canning Pork Chili Verde

The Satisfaction of Homegrown Pork

Raising your own pig for meat isn’t just about the final product—it’s a journey filled with a deep sense of accomplishment and a unique connection to your food. In this section, we’ll explore the fulfillment that comes from raising your own pig and the invaluable benefits of knowing the source of your meat.

A Sense of Accomplishment

Raising your own pig is a labor of love, and the sense of accomplishment it brings is truly special. Here’s what makes it so rewarding:

1. Self-Sufficiency: There’s a particular pride in knowing that you’ve played a fundamental role in providing food for your family. It’s a testament to self-sufficiency and a connection to traditional skills.
2. Bond with Your Food: When you’ve nurtured an animal from birth, you develop a unique bond with your food. This connection instills respect and gratitude for every meal your pig provides.
3. Continuous Learning: Raising a pig is a continuous learning process. You gain insights into animal husbandry, butchering skills, and the entire food production cycle.

Knowing the Source of Your Meat

One of the most significant advantages of raising your own pig is the knowledge you have about the source of your meat:

1. Quality Assurance: Raising your pig means you have full control over its diet, living conditions, and overall welfare. This results in meat of the highest quality.
2. Transparency: In an era where the origin of much of our food is shrouded in mystery, raising your own pig offers complete transparency. You know precisely how the animal was cared for and what it consumed.
3. Health and Safety: With full control, you can be confident that your meat is free from unwanted chemicals, hormones, or unnecessary antibiotics. This contributes to the health and safety of your family’s meals.

In summary, the satisfaction of homegrown pork goes beyond the taste and texture of the meat. It encompasses a profound sense of accomplishment, a unique connection to your food, and the valuable knowledge of where your meat comes from. Raising your own pig is not just a culinary experience; it’s a holistic journey that nourishes the body and soul.

Conclusion

In closing, our exploration of what to expect when your pig meets the butcher has shed light on a fascinating journey from farm to table. Here are the key takeaways from this blog post:

Raising Your Own Pig: Raising your own pig for meat is a very rewarding experience that leads to self-sufficiency, a strong bond with your food, and continuous learning.

Buy A Pig From Local Farmer: Instead of raising a pig, you can always purchase a “ready for butcher” pig from a local farmer. That way, you are supporting that local farmer while still getting some fantastic pork for yourself.

Feeding and Care: Proper nutrition, clean water, suitable shelter, health monitoring, and enrichment are vital for your pig’s well-being.

The Butchering Process: Taking your pig to the butcher is a significant step in the journey. It’s a moment where your hard work transforms into the bounty of meat you’ve nurtured. Carefully select which butcher you would like to go to. Don’t be afraid to ask about the process.

The Satisfaction of Homegrown Pork: The journey culminates in a profound sense of accomplishment and a deep connection to your food. You’ll savor the benefits of knowing the source of your meat and supporting sustainable practices.

Now, as you consider the journey from raising your pig to enjoying its delicious meat, we invite you to contemplate the rewarding experience of embarking on this path. The knowledge that you’ve played a vital role in providing food for your family, the bond you share with your food, and the transparency of knowing precisely where your meat comes from are truly exceptional.

We also encourage you to share your own experiences, questions, and insights in the comments section below. Whether you’re a seasoned pig-raiser or just beginning, the exchange of knowledge and stories is a valuable part of the journey. Your experiences can inspire others and help them along their own path to homegrown happiness.

• Homegrown Happiness: What to Expect When Your Pig Meets the Butcher
• REVIEW: YABER 3500A Portable Car Jump Starter
• Preserve the Flavor: Awesome Recipe for Canning Pork Chili Verde
• Raising Pigs: The Basics And Advantages on the Modern Homestead