We finally got our hog, Porky off to the butcher on August 1st. We had intended on butchering him when he was about 6 months old back in April but things were pretty busy and before we knew it we had let him get to be almost 10 months old! Porky was issued two reprieves back in June and July due to our inefficiency at getting him loaded into the truck. On two different days we had tried to take him off, but he won those battles and wore us all out.
We may have lost a couple of battles, but we ultimately won the war. Last Wednesday I called on a friend for help and between Matthew, I and the cavalry, the three of us were able to hog-tie and wrestle that big critter into the truck with the rest of the family holding up the sides to our ramp to prevent him from taking a detour. It still took us a couple of hours, but we were at last triumphant.
This past Saturday we picked up the pork and we have been eating well this week at Pure Water Hollow. The hog dressed out at 343 pounds!(including the head and all the fat for lard); On Tuesday we had our first pork chops for dinner along with our own corn, green beans, tomatoes, and peppers. A dinner composed of only our own home grown food! We have also had some of the sausage with our own home-grown eggs for some of our breakfasts.
The flavor of these pork chops and our sausage has been unbelievably good! At first I thought it was my imagination, but the more bites I took, the more I realized how superior this meat was compared to what we had been buying at the store. The whole family agreed.
I was curious as to how the cost of this meat compares to store bought pork so I did a little analysis. We spent about $479 in commercial feed for our 4 pigs since we got them back in October and November. That means that Porky ate up about a fourth of that, or $120. The butcher bill for the 343 pounds, including the kill fee, came to $129.90. So the cost of raising Porky from a 20 pound piglet to a 400 plus pound hog to 343 lbs of finished meat was about $250. 343 lbs of meat divided by $250 comes out to about .73 cents per pound for our freezer full of pork! That is very, very good considering the quality of the cuts of meat. There is no meat at the grocery for only .73 cents per pound! We are going to pay an extra 25 cents per pound to the butcher for them to cure the hams and some of the bacon, which we have to wait a bit longer to pick up, but that will still be less than a dollar per pound for the cured ham and bacon.
We are planning on keeping 2 of our piglets to raise ourselves for the freezer. If we stop them at 6 months, I’m thinking that the two of them should give us about as much meat as this first big one, but less fat.
If all the pork tastes as wonderful as the first we have sampled, than raising our own pork will definitely become a regular occurrence on our homestead. One day we will learn how to do all the butchering ourselves and save even more money!
1 comment
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Beth on September 3, 2007 at 11:13 am
WISHING YOU THE BEST..DO KEEP US POSTED WE LOVE NEW BABIES:)
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