Butchered Our First Pig Yesterday
Mar 15, 2015 6:02:51 GMT -5
simplynaturalfarm, throwback, and 6 more like this
Post by eljay on Mar 15, 2015 6:02:51 GMT -5
This was an AGH. she was a runt, a year old, but weighed only about 100#. We didn't have a scale to weight her so I weighed all the pieces and scraps. I'm probably within 5# on my estimate. It's a nice number because I can easily figure percentages. Here is the breakdown of what we got.
Steaks and chops 6#
Ribs 2.5#
Roasts 16#
Bacon 10#
Chops/steaks 9#
Scrap for sausage 7#
Leaf lard 3#
Scrap for dog food 7.5
Fat for chicken food 5#
Head and entrails 25#
Skin 17#
Her sisters are easily twice her size which will be nice because the chops are microscopic. This was definitely a lard pig. She probably had a one inch layer of fat and more in some places. We are able to use 75% of her between us and the dogs and the chickens. We even cut the skin into strips for dog chews. I had to trim some of the fat off of it first though and that will go to the chickens.
We had some of the cheek meat fried like side pork at lunch and it was wonderful. I'm looking forward to smoking our own bacon. I strained that fat that was left over from cooking it and it's going to be perfect cooking lard.
We've never butchered a pig before. A great friend came over to give us a hand with the ins and outs. We 'll do it again, especially on the small ones. More will go to the dogs though when we do. There was an awful lot of time spent trimming out the tiny bits of meat for sausage. One of the reasons we decided to get these smaller pigs is so that we can provide more of the dogs diet from on farm. We really like bacon and chops, roasts not so much so I could see chunking that up for the dogs.
The entire process took up most of the day, 9:30-4:00 from start to complete clean up. About half of that time was lecture. Our friend would explain, demonstrate, coach while DH did cutting. That also included a couple of hours after the slaughter while we had lunch and waited for the meat to cool. We packed it in ice in a couple of coolers to stiffen it up and make it a little easier to handle while cutting.
Sorry, no pictures. I was too busy living it and forgot to do that.
Steaks and chops 6#
Ribs 2.5#
Roasts 16#
Bacon 10#
Chops/steaks 9#
Scrap for sausage 7#
Leaf lard 3#
Scrap for dog food 7.5
Fat for chicken food 5#
Head and entrails 25#
Skin 17#
Her sisters are easily twice her size which will be nice because the chops are microscopic. This was definitely a lard pig. She probably had a one inch layer of fat and more in some places. We are able to use 75% of her between us and the dogs and the chickens. We even cut the skin into strips for dog chews. I had to trim some of the fat off of it first though and that will go to the chickens.
We had some of the cheek meat fried like side pork at lunch and it was wonderful. I'm looking forward to smoking our own bacon. I strained that fat that was left over from cooking it and it's going to be perfect cooking lard.
We've never butchered a pig before. A great friend came over to give us a hand with the ins and outs. We 'll do it again, especially on the small ones. More will go to the dogs though when we do. There was an awful lot of time spent trimming out the tiny bits of meat for sausage. One of the reasons we decided to get these smaller pigs is so that we can provide more of the dogs diet from on farm. We really like bacon and chops, roasts not so much so I could see chunking that up for the dogs.
The entire process took up most of the day, 9:30-4:00 from start to complete clean up. About half of that time was lecture. Our friend would explain, demonstrate, coach while DH did cutting. That also included a couple of hours after the slaughter while we had lunch and waited for the meat to cool. We packed it in ice in a couple of coolers to stiffen it up and make it a little easier to handle while cutting.
Sorry, no pictures. I was too busy living it and forgot to do that.
We don't buy store pork - it makes me extremely constipated, it's dry and lacks flavour. But when we eat our own pork or the pork we get from our neighbours - man oh man, I'm just about an addict for roasts. 
The reality is I keep going back and forth. I want them, and people we know who have bought them love them. However, two things keep me from committing: our milk cow is gone to some Amish friends who needed her, we dropped our beeves from 28 to 14, and we have a high school graduation, a college graduation, and a wedding this summer. The idea of not being tied to the farm for all that is quite appealing...
