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Current pic of "Pickles" ... http://i671.photobucket.com/albums/vv71/TheRedGoat/Photo_082910_002.jpg TRG She's still cute. 
Pour some hog feed into her for a few weeks and see how much she gains. My hogs are getting almost scary huge. I'm thinking I might have to process them in September just so they don't get too fatty. Pics when I can. How old were your pigs when you got them? I think Pickles is just about 6 months old right now. TRG |
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Pigs are starting to pick up steam with their growth. Getting pretty big and sluggish now though they still run about.
I moved them over to their other pasture this afternoon. Actually found some volunteer squash hiding in the weeds. Must've been "deposited" by last year's pigs as we didn't plant squash this year. 
Planning on taking them to the butcher in about a month. I actually found a butcher who will come out and shoot them here but I'm torn about it. I trust my prior butcher to return my meat to meat and nothing but my meat. I'm not sure I trust this new butcher quite as much. I'm still thinking about it, but I'll probably end up hauling to the local guy as I have in the past. 
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Pigs are starting to pick up steam with their growth. Getting pretty big and sluggish now though they still run about. I moved them over to their other pasture this afternoon. Actually found some volunteer squash hiding in the weeds. Must've been "deposited" by last year's pigs as we didn't plant squash this year.
Planning on taking them to the butcher in about a month. I actually found a butcher who will come out and shoot them here but I'm torn about it. I trust my prior butcher to return my meat to meat and nothing but my meat. I'm not sure I trust this new butcher quite as much. I'm still thinking about it, but I'll probably end up hauling to the local guy as I have in the past. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/FredFeral/Pigs2010/IMG_4144.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/FredFeral/Pigs2010/IMG_4142.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/FredFeral/Pigs2010/IMG_4162.jpg I wish you lived closer, Feral. I'd have you feed out a pig for me the way you do yours. I bet you could further offset your costs if you chose to do that. People around here will pay a premium for meat they know and trust. Not sure how much labor one more pig might add, but it looks like you've got your system pretty well figured out. Those pigs look great! And they're friendly enough that you turn your back on them–– I never did get that cozy with pigs. Always wanted them where I could see them.
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Feral, Did you use the Ivomec pour-on for a wormer? I bought some at tractor supply and it was also packaged for cattle. I used it anyway and it worked as far as i know. Just wondering what your experience was with the stuff? Your hogs look healthy! Nah, I dithered around about it too long. I just used piperazine in water again. I have a gallon jug of the stuff, figured I might as well use it.
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I wish you lived closer, Feral. I'd have you feed out a pig for me the way you do yours. I bet you could further offset your costs if you chose to do that. People around here will pay a premium for meat they know and trust. Not sure how much labor one more pig might add, but it looks like you've got your system pretty well figured out. Those pigs look great! And they're friendly enough that you turn your back on them–– I never did get that cozy with pigs. Always wanted them where I could see them.
I'd gladly feed one for you. Four seems to be a good number for us......but once you have one, might as well have four.
I can't account for the docility of these particular pigs. They're just very gentle pigs. The last two bunches I fed out I wouldn't have turned my back on for a second. Maybe it's because these pigs came off a small farm and were handled more as babies? Dunno. |
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I wish you lived closer, Feral. I'd have you feed out a pig for me the way you do yours. I bet you could further offset your costs if you chose to do that. People around here will pay a premium for meat they know and trust. Not sure how much labor one more pig might add, but it looks like you've got your system pretty well figured out. Those pigs look great! And they're friendly enough that you turn your back on them–– I never did get that cozy with pigs. Always wanted them where I could see them.
I'd gladly feed one for you. Four seems to be a good number for us......but once you have one, might as well have four.
I can't account for the docility of these particular pigs. They're just very gentle pigs. The last two bunches I fed out I wouldn't have turned my back on for a second. Maybe it's because these pigs came off a small farm and were handled more as babies? Dunno. *sigh* Sweet pigs would make it harder for me to send them to the great pigpen in the sky.
But they're a helluva lot easier on the psyche (at least for me) than the mean pigs. So I'd go back to that farm for next year's. You've certainly disproved my theory that pigs will get out, given the opportunity. Maybe I just always had mean pigs as I was growing up. 
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Feral - how much would you guess this pig weighs? I called two different butchers today and got pricing. They were very nice. No appointment required. Vacuum sealing was about $15/hog. Turn around time for fresh meat was 1 week and cured stuff was 2 weeks. One of the places scraped and one skinned (I want scraped because we'll smoke the butts and picnic). $25 kill fee and $.50/lbs dressed weight. Add another $.60/lbs for cured meats. My 4 hogs have eaten 250 pounds of finisher in 10 days. That works out to 6.25 pounds per day per hog. Does anyone know what the likely conversion rate is on feed? So far, they have eaten about 1500 pounds of feed. I think we're going to try and find a used grain hopper next year and buy a couple of those 1000 bags of feed direct from the mill. I picked up some corn today and pitched about 5 pounds on the ground for the pigs. They really liked it. We've also been putting a bale of hay for them to eat over a three week period. They really like that too. R. |
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Quoted: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/FredFeral/Pigs2010/IMG_4162.jpg Feral - how much would you guess this pig weighs? I called two different butchers today and got pricing. They were very nice. No appointment required. Vacuum sealing was about $15/hog. Turn around time for fresh meat was 1 week and cured stuff was 2 weeks. One of the places scraped and one skinned (I want scraped because we'll smoke the butts and picnic). $25 kill fee and $.50/lbs dressed weight. Add another $.60/lbs for cured meats. My 4 hogs have eaten 250 pounds of finisher in 10 days. That works out to 6.25 pounds per day per hog. Does anyone know what the likely conversion rate is on feed? So far, they have eaten about 1500 pounds of feed. I think we're going to try and find a used grain hopper next year and buy a couple of those 1000 bags of feed direct from the mill. I picked up some corn today and pitched about 5 pounds on the ground for the pigs. They really liked it. We've also been putting a bale of hay for them to eat over a three week period. They really like that too. He's the runt of the bunch––was noticeably smaller from the start and remains so. I'd say he's 150-160 pounds in that pic. I'm planning on putting a tape on the hogs this weekend. Conventional wisdom on feed conversion is that pigs are about 3:1 to 4:1 with commercial producers perhaps being able to do a bit better than 3:1. Smaller pigs have better conversion rates than bigger pigs. Pigs kept in temperate climates have better conversion rates than pigs kept in hot climates. Pigs bred to grow will have better conversion rates than the heritage breeds. Rule of thumb is 700-800 pounds of feed to take a 35-40 pound shoat to market weight. In actual practice, it may take more than that but is unlikely to take less. ETA: One other thing.......if you haven't asked, you need to ask those butchers whether they guarantee you you're getting your meat back. You don't want to take your custom fed hogs to a place where "pork is pork" and your meat is interchangeable with the garbage hogs that Cracker Bob just dropped off. 
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Rule of thumb is 700-800 pounds of feed to take a 35-40 pound shoat to market weight. In actual practice, it may take more than that but is unlikely to take less. . I was running numbers on Pickles over the weekend. I have only purchased 300lbs of corn and 50lbs of Cattle range cubes (for an experiment). 6 bags of corn x.4.99 = 30.00 +1 Range cubes x 4.99 35.00 in feed. Everything else has been table scraps. I added the range cubes to her feed trough, since she did not like them dry. Mixed with her soured corn,and some water she does eat it now. And, although it has only been a week with the cattle feed mixed in (20% protein vs 14% for hog feed) there is a growth difference She is beginning to add weight, but, at the price per pound and calories per dollar rates ... she is an expensive piece of pork. If SHTF I would be better off grinding the corn in to meal and eating it myself. I will butcher her myself and render her fat in to lard. I also like to make sausage from the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver. So, that will save me some money compared to a butcher, but ... if I was raising hogs on commercial feed, paying a butcher to process and wrap the meat, and paying for him to spice the sausage .. it would be cheaper to just buy it on sale throughout the year. TRG |
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How much is butchering typically costing you and how much feed (in weight) would a pig need to get to butchering size? See above for comment on how much feed. Butchering runs me $59 a head for KILL/CUT. That gets me everything broken down (including ground pork) as I specify. Roasts, thicknesses of chops, how much ground, etc. etc. But for that price I get the meat served up in meat tubs separated with parchment paper (and I have to return the meat tubs ).
The "luxury items" are all extra and can run the bill to the butcher up pretty high depending on how fancy you want to get. Sausage is $0.65 /lb, curing & smoking is $0.89 /lb, scrapple is $4 a pan, vac-packing and freezing is $0.49 /lb. Last year we did the kill/cut fee and let him do our hams––the charge was modest. This year I'm gonna let him do more even though it'll run up the tab. I'll probably get some of his sausage and I'll let him vac-pack and quick freeze a portion. I've grown to distrust my FoodSaver in the past year and I really don't want it failing when I've still got 100 pounds of meat sitting in a meat tub. 
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... if I was raising hogs on commercial feed, paying a butcher to process and wrap the meat, and paying for him to spice the sausage .. it would be cheaper to just buy it on sale throughout the year. Quite a bit cheaper, in fact. Getting fancy at the butcher drives the cost up considerably. |
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... if I was raising hogs on commercial feed, paying a butcher to process and wrap the meat, and paying for him to spice the sausage .. it would be cheaper to just buy it on sale throughout the year. Quite a bit cheaper, in fact. Getting fancy at the butcher drives the cost up considerably. You mean cheaper to raise it yourself, or cheaper to buy it commercially? I typically buy pork butt at .79-.99 a pound, raw. Ham .79-1.59 cured, smoked. Loin .99-1.99 raw. Bacon 1.75-2.00 a pound I can see/understand why raising a hog would have been viable 50-100 years ago. If the hogs were able to roam for acorns, eat scraps, recycle other animal products, but ... buying feed by the sack does not seem to make sense to me, now that I have done it. TRG |
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I can see/understand why raising a hog would have been viable 50-100 years ago. If the hogs were able to roam for acorns, eat scraps, recycle other animal products, but ... buying feed by the sack does not seem to make sense to me, now that I have done it. You remind me of the folks who, when asked "How much would you pay for well-fed, humanely raised pork?" respond with "Whatever it costs in the supermarket." If the dollar-cost is the absolute driving factor, home-raised pork will only compete with commercial pork if you can score a good deal on feed like Dave does with his outdated dog food. When you're buying feed in small lots, it's hard to compete with the guys who are buying it by the boxcar load. OTOH, I feed my pigs out for roughly supermarket cost provided I pack them myself and can sell some for more than my cost. In return, I get indisputably better pork than commercial stuff and I at least know where it came from. (Commercial hog finishing operations are truly foul places in my experience.) |
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I can see/understand why raising a hog would have been viable 50-100 years ago. If the hogs were able to roam for acorns, eat scraps, recycle other animal products, but ... buying feed by the sack does not seem to make sense to me, now that I have done it. You remind me of the folks who, when asked "How much would you pay for well-fed, humanely raised pork?" respond with "Whatever it costs in the supermarket." If the dollar-cost is the absolute driving factor, home-raised pork will only compete with commercial pork if you can score a good deal on feed like Dave does with his outdated dog food. When you're buying feed in small lots, it's hard to compete with the guys who are buying it by the boxcar load. OTOH, I feed my pigs out for roughly supermarket cost provided I pack them myself and can sell some for more than my cost. In return, I get indisputably better pork than commercial stuff and I at least know where it came from. (Commercial hog finishing operations are truly foul places in my experience.) No argument from me on any of that assessment. When I was first feeding Pickles, the 'free' food that came from table scraps, or outdated foodstuffs (stale chips, moldy bread) seemed like a reasonable option. Now that she is larger, she consumes 1/2 gallon (or more) of soured corn per day plus table scraps. Not to mention the daily requirement for me to feed her, give her water and the materials needed to make a pen for her. I kept my costs to a barebones minimum and learned a lot about SHTF animal husbandry. In short, if SHTF, the average Joe is not going to just pen a hog, raise a couple of hens, and milk a cow on Day Two of the Collapse. TRG |
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I can see/understand why raising a hog would have been viable 50-100 years ago. If the hogs were able to roam for acorns, eat scraps, recycle other animal products, but ... buying feed by the sack does not seem to make sense to me, now that I have done it. You remind me of the folks who, when asked "How much would you pay for well-fed, humanely raised pork?" respond with "Whatever it costs in the supermarket." If the dollar-cost is the absolute driving factor, home-raised pork will only compete with commercial pork if you can score a good deal on feed like Dave does with his outdated dog food. When you're buying feed in small lots, it's hard to compete with the guys who are buying it by the boxcar load. OTOH, I feed my pigs out for roughly supermarket cost provided I pack them myself and can sell some for more than my cost. In return, I get indisputably better pork than commercial stuff and I at least know where it came from. (Commercial hog finishing operations are truly foul places in my experience.) home raised pigs like this are not the cheap cuts of meat in fact, there is no equivilent in a supermarket maybe, in a high end butcher, you might find some cuts that are similar, but mostly your own will be even better. comparing the $1/lb cheap nasty shit in the store to $4/lb home raised is apples and fig newtons. It's really not the same thing. BTW, pork should be red, not white, but unless you buy really high quality pork, you'll never know that. |
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How much is butchering typically costing you and how much feed (in weight) would a pig need to get to butchering size? See above for comment on how much feed. Butchering runs me $59 a head for KILL/CUT. That gets me everything broken down (including ground pork) as I specify. Roasts, thicknesses of chops, how much ground, etc. etc. But for that price I get the meat served up in meat tubs separated with parchment paper (and I have to return the meat tubs ).
The "luxury items" are all extra and can run the bill to the butcher up pretty high depending on how fancy you want to get. Sausage is $0.65 /lb, curing & smoking is $0.89 /lb, scrapple is $4 a pan, vac-packing and freezing is $0.49 /lb. Last year we did the kill/cut fee and let him do our hams––the charge was modest. This year I'm gonna let him do more even though it'll run up the tab. I'll probably get some of his sausage and I'll let him vac-pack and quick freeze a portion. I've grown to distrust my FoodSaver in the past year and I really don't want it failing when I've still got 100 pounds of meat sitting in a meat tub.
That's pretty reasonable charges I think all done a whole pigs runs us about $250 per pig. That's killed on site (which is TOTALLY worth the extra money), gutted, skinned, cut any way you want, wrapped any way you want, hams and bacon smoked and cured (makes awesome hams) and sausage's made. I haven't had the bratwurst done, but one of my customers did and she said it was the best brats she'd ever had. All sausage flavors cost the same. (breakfast, italian, german, chorizo, bratwurst, etc). Figure about a $1/lb by the time it's all done. At what we charged last year, figure for the entire pig, ti's $3.50/lb (our charges plus butchering). too much for sausage not enough for the nicer cuts (hams, etc), but that's what it runs. nasty supermarket sausage is typically $2/lb for the generic chubbs, more for better. It's not an unreasonable charge. |
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If the dollar-cost is the absolute driving factor, home-raised pork will only compete with commercial pork if you can score a good deal on feed like Dave does with his outdated dog food. When you're buying feed in small lots, it's hard to compete with the guys who are buying it by the boxcar100 ton hoppercar load. And that's just considering the cost of feed plus the initial cost of the pig and cost of butchering. If you had to figure in your labor and facilities costs you'd wonder how you can afford it. Comparing to grocery store prices is a quick lesson in how incredibly efficient modern agriculture production really is. Of course, if you bought it on sale then you are probably buying it at less than cost of production. |
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I can see/understand why raising a hog would have been viable 50-100 years ago. If the hogs were able to roam for acorns, eat scraps, recycle other animal products, but ... buying feed by the sack does not seem to make sense to me, now that I have done it. You remind me of the folks who, when asked "How much would you pay for well-fed, humanely raised pork?" respond with "Whatever it costs in the supermarket." If the dollar-cost is the absolute driving factor, home-raised pork will only compete with commercial pork if you can score a good deal on feed like Dave does with his outdated dog food. When you're buying feed in small lots, it's hard to compete with the guys who are buying it by the boxcar load. OTOH, I feed my pigs out for roughly supermarket cost provided I pack them myself and can sell some for more than my cost. In return, I get indisputably better pork than commercial stuff and I at least know where it came from. (Commercial hog finishing operations are truly foul places in my experience.) home raised pigs like this are not the cheap cuts of meat Unless you are having some special 'butterflied standing rib roast with hams attached' then the cuts are the same. Porckchops is a porckchop, a rib is a rib, and a ham is well, still a ham. in fact, there is no equivilent in a supermarket maybe, in a high end butcher, you might find some cuts that are similar, but mostly your own will be even better. Maybe you mean the quality of the cut meat? Tenderness? Flavor? Attention to detail? comparing the $1/lb cheap nasty shit in the store to $4/lb home raised is apples and fig newtons. It's really not the same thing. BTW, pork should be red, not white, but unless you buy really high quality pork, you'll never know that. The last pork I put in my mouth I stalked, hunted, killed, dressed, butchered, rendered, wrapped, ground, smoked and seasoned by myself. I am 'fairly' certain I know what pork looks like. Although I can also say I have no preference between Name Brand and Store Brand Apples or figs. TRG |
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I think all done a whole pigs runs us about $250 per pig. Figure about a $1/lb by the time it's all done. I'd like to remind everyone that the $1 per pound is per pound of live weight. Figures I've seen indicate most hogs will yield 50% (+/- 3%) of bone-in, cut meat. Most people prefer to butcher at around #250 live weight which yields about #125 of meat. It takes about #750 of feed to raise a pig from birth to #250. It can take even more. *I've rounded these off a little, info is just rule-of-thumb type info for those looking at maybe growing their own pig in the future. |
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I think all done a whole pigs runs us about $250 per pig. Figure about a $1/lb by the time it's all done. Figures I've seen indicate most hogs will yield 50% (+/- 3%) of bone-in, cut meat. . That would match what I have experienced with feral hogs as well. 1:1:1:1 Hide-head:Guts:Bones:meat On ferals, since they tend to be skinned and then ground to sausage, I have found it is about 25% of live weight is the 'meat' weight. 100lb feral will yield 25lbs of boneless meat. TRG |
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I guess I see this SHTF discussion stuff as being interesting, and of some value, but I admit that it puzzles me a little.
Regarding SHTF and raising hogs/other stuff.... Fifty years ago, the farmer who had a couple of hogs in a pen also had a few acres of corn that he planted and picked (even by hand––I grew up doing this, and I am not 50) to feed those hogs on into the fall (to supplement the slop and overgrown garden produce he fed), until the weather got cool enough to butcher. That's the reason old barns had corn cribs. That was the feed for the meat and dairy on the hoof. In addition, the farmer had big tubs hanging on the wall for slaughtering, and the tools to go with it. He had a smokehouse to preserve meat, and the knowledge of how to cure it. A lot goes into a sustainable operation, and buying feed, 50-100 years ago, was a very, VERY small part of it. The type of operation we're talking about––anything similar to SHTF––meant they didn't have money for commercial feed. (In SHTF, it might not even be available––no ready source). My grandfather raised hogs. They didn't forage, and he didn't buy feed for them. Was the pork the fanciest possible quality? No. Were his hogs engineered to grow to their best potenital? No. Those considerations are luxuries. In SHTF, luxury is not the focus. We drop back a few levels on Maslow's Hierarchy at that point. It'll be, "Can I keep a hog alive and put a little weight on it, can I then butcher and preserve the meat in a way my family won't die if they eat it, and can I store it?" If you can do that, you'll be way, WAY ahead of the game, but most people won't be able to do that. Beyond that, whether it's cheaper in the store is kind of another strange question to me. Because a) the store might not be there, b) the store might not have meat and c) I might not have the means to buy that meat, if I trusted its source to not make me sick. So I think the reason to be skilled at raising hogs is so that you have the SKILL. But I think whether the meat is cheaper in the store, with regard to SHTF, is a track that doesn't really lead anywhere. In the worst sort of SHTF, if you can raise meat, you'll have meat. If you can't raise meat, you won't have meat. But raising the meat means raising a lot of other stuff, like the food to feed the meat. And in SHTF, table scraps are going to get really skimpy. I'm not tossing out stuff then the way I do now. Once again, no luxuries when survival is the focus. No, a person is not going to successfully start raising hogs a day or two into SHTF. Nor are they going to successfully keep cows, or chickens. They're not going to successfully grow their own garden either. That's one of the things I find most  about the arfcom "here's what I'd do" and SHTF mentality. I know good and well that I can't just start doing these things when the SHTF, and I have experience doing it. The folks who've never done any of this––no way.
So while all these discussions are interesting, I seldom see the whole truth laid out there. That without a whole BUNCH of sustainablity already in practice, none of this is going to work. And I don't see a lot of folks operating any of their SHTF scenarios sustainably. That's not a criticism. Nor is it nay-saying the efforts. It's just an observation. What Feral and others are doing––feeding out hogs––is one small skill to add to the growing list of skills a person would need to survive without the support system we all depend on. But all by itself, it's not going to work. So the comparisons of cost and things....seems like that would need to be taken to a whole other level, or else we realize that raising hogs like this is something we do to improve quality of our food and quality of our lives, and teach our children that something had to die for us to live. The skills we get are a plus, but the reality check is, that in SHTF, for most of us, it's not going to work.
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The last pork I put in my mouth I stalked, hunted, killed, dressed, butchered, rendered, wrapped, ground, smoked and seasoned by myself. I am 'fairly' certain I know what pork looks like. Although I can also say I have no preference between Name Brand and Store Brand Apples or figs. Well, you may know, but a whole lot of folks out there don't know. The "pork, the other white meat" ad campaign is older than they are and they really think a "good" pork chop is snow white, flaccid and "tastes like chicken." Those folks haven't a clue that those supposed superior attributes of commercial pork are really just the byproducts of raising pigs in a very unnatural manner. Those folks will, most likely, never know that the meat they're coating with Shake 'N Bake is not very good meat. |
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Wow. These guys look pretty pleasant. As I recall, the dudes from last year were nothing short of Barbarians.
Quoted:...So the comparisons of cost and things....seems like that would need to be taken to a whole other level, or else we realize that raising hogs like this is something we do to improve quality of our food and quality of our lives, and teach our children that something had to die for us to live. The skills we get are a plus, but the reality check is, that in SHTF, for most of us, it's not going to work.
Excellent statement. Thank you. I believe there is far more value in knowledge than you can sometimes cost calculate. |
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The last pork I put in my mouth I stalked, hunted, killed, dressed, butchered, rendered, wrapped, ground, smoked and seasoned by myself. I am 'fairly' certain I know what pork looks like. Although I can also say I have no preference between Name Brand and Store Brand Apples or figs. Well, you may know, but a whole lot of folks out there don't know. The "pork, the other white meat" ad campaign is older than they are and they really think a "good" pork chop is snow white, flaccid and "tastes like chicken." Those folks haven't a clue that those supposed superior attributes of commercial pork are really just the byproducts of raising pigs in a very unnatural manner. Those folks will, most likely, never know that the meat they're coating with Shake 'N Bake is not very good meat. True enough, but if I had a gun to my head, I would take a pork loin from Wal-mart, pound for pound, over a feral loin any day of the week. The pigs you are raising make me hungry. I can almost smell that buttery fat rendering in to cracklins. Those domestic breeds, when compared to what is running through the Texas backwoods are just far and away better products all around. In my experience, once the 'novelty' of wild hog wears off, the ease of use, price, availability, texture and consistency of commercial pork wins hands-down. And Kitty-w-Cigs. Good post. I see a lot of the 'when SHTF' type posts and I scoff at most of them. This experiment with raising a feral has been very interesting to me. It has shown that without a 'system' in place, that is already self-sufficient, most of us would be left scrambling if the trucks stop delivering to Wal-mart for a month. I recall seeing a corn crib in central Texas that was lined with galvanized barn tin to keep out rats. It was, as you said, used to retain corn for livestock feed. TRG |
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I recall seeing a corn crib in central Texas that was lined with galvanized barn tin to keep out rats. It was, as you said, used to retain corn for livestock feed. TRG That's interesting. I've never seen that done. And THAT brings up even another point in the sustainability chain. I have a tough time keeping rats out of everything. Dog food, chicken feed, you name it. A corn crib is just a nightmare waiting to happen really. But when I was a kid, we didn't have rat infestations like we do now. But we had.....drum roll please.....barn cats. And what did we feed those barn cats? Not much. We did supplement their own hunting with the first milk we stripped from the cows when we were milking.... So....in a sustainable operation, one thing feeds another thing. Some stuff, you have to buy. But I don't know anybody, NOW, who has the circle complete. Big holes are filled with a trip to town when they need something. Heck, I'm so far down the food chain at this point that when the power goes out I have to move out of my house. That's bad. I have a long way to go. Like most folks. |
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I recall seeing a corn crib in central Texas that was lined with galvanized barn tin to keep out rats. It was, as you said, used to retain corn for livestock feed. TRG That's interesting. I've never seen that done. And THAT brings up even another point in the sustainability chain. I have a tough time keeping rats out of everything. Dog food, chicken feed, you name it. A corn crib is just a nightmare waiting to happen really. But when I was a kid, we didn't have rat infestations like we do now. But we had.....drum roll please.....barn cats. And what did we feed those barn cats? Not much. We did supplement their own hunting with the first milk we stripped from the cows when we were milking.... So....in a sustainable operation, one thing feeds another thing. Some stuff, you have to buy. But I don't know anybody, NOW, who has the circle complete. Big holes are filled with a trip to town when they need something. Heck, I'm so far down the food chain at this point that when the power goes out I have to move out of my house. That's bad. I have a long way to go. Like most folks. I wish I still had pics. It was completely lined, roof, floor, walls, doors, windows ....with galvanized (that wavy metal) sheet metal. It was carefully bent/rounded where necessary to make it completely rat proof. Damndest thing you ever saw. Supposedly it was common 'back in the day' to do this to prevent the rats from gnawing through any other material. TRG |
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So I think the reason to be skilled at raising hogs is so that you have the SKILL. But I think whether the meat is cheaper in the store, with regard to SHTF, is a track that doesn't really lead anywhere. In the worst sort of SHTF, if you can raise meat, you'll have meat. If you can't raise meat, you won't have meat. But raising the meat means raising a lot of other stuff, like the food to feed the meat. And in SHTF, table scraps are going to get really skimpy. I'm not tossing out stuff then the way I do now. Once again, no luxuries when survival is the focus. No, a person is not going to successfully start raising hogs a day or two into SHTF. Nor are they going to successfully keep cows, or chickens. They're not going to successfully grow their own garden either. That's one of the things I find most about the arfcom "here's what I'd do" and SHTF mentality. I know good and well that I can't just start doing these things when the SHTF, and I have experience doing it. The folks who've never done any of this––no way.
So while all these discussions are interesting, I seldom see the whole truth laid out there. That without a whole BUNCH of sustainablity already in practice, none of this is going to work. And I don't see a lot of folks operating any of their SHTF scenarios sustainably. Great post. |
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Well, I actually ENJOY fooling with hogs.
Helped weigh in for the fair this evening, helps me eyeball guesstimate live weights. And it always turns into a rodeo sooner or later. 
As far as cost, like has been mentioned before, I occasionally come across finished hogs at $0.50/lb. live weight. THAT is the way to go if you want to maximize your meat dollars. But I LIKE to know what went into mine, I like that their pen is also one of my gardens, worked up and heavily fertilized by them. A guy over on trapperman.com, commercial fisherman, has posted about his hogs. Grows them on excess produce,fish and fish parts, and then finishes on commerical diet/corn, and says they are GREAT w/ NO residual fishiness. I do utilize a lot of beaver carcasses, etc, and have acess to PLENTY of fish, but have been afraid to try the fish.YET. |
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ETA: One other thing.......if you haven't asked, you need to ask those butchers whether they guarantee you you're getting your meat back. You don't want to take your custom fed hogs to a place where "pork is pork" and your meat is interchangeable with the garbage hogs that Cracker Bob just dropped off. I talked to both butchers and asked them how I could be sure that I got my hogs back. They both said they take that issue very seriously and start by tagging the animal while I'm still there and then have inventory control checkpoints as animal moves through the processing. They both also said that the volume of pigs at any one time helps ensure that people get their own pigs back. One of the guys asked what I was feeding, how I was feeding, how I was watering, wormer, etc. He was very impressed with how we were raising the pigs and said it sounded like I had done this before. I just told him I had good teachers. 
Here are the costs as they described for full service: Kill Fee - $25 Scrape - Yes, included in kill fee. Price/lbs - $0.48 Cured/lbs - +$0.50 Waste fee - $5 Vacuum seal - $15/ hog Pickup - 2 weeks for all (cured and fresh) Based on a 275 kill weight, I came up with these estimates per hog: Kill Weight - 275 lbs. Dressed Weight Yield - 73% Dressed Weight - 201 lbs. Table Ready Yield - 76% Table Ready - 153 Cured Meat Yield - 20% (of table ready yield) Cured Meat - 55 lbs. I got the yield rates off the internet so no telling how accurate they are. Estmated processing cost Kill fee - $25 Processing fee - $96 Vacuum seal fee - $15 Waste fee - $5 Curing fee - $28 Processing Cost - $169 I'll be interested in seeing how the actual cost really compares once all the numbers are in. R. |
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I will have to say the benefits from raising your own hog cannot be measured in dollars. The satisfaction in being part of a process very few people have ever seen or even thought about is priceless. The knowlege that the food you give your children is as pure and healthy as possible and the animal was treated with kindness and respect throughout its life is a double win. I want my kids to know that something has to die everytime they eat a chicken nugget, hot dog, or BLT. How many millions of people in this country have no idea what takes place on a hog, cattle or chicken farm, but eat its products every day?
The cost of raising a hog can vary. If you have some land, a small garden and a plot of feild corn will go a long way to feeding a hog through the summer and into fall. This will extend the time it takes to mature by eight or so weeks, but your feed cost will be half. Just alternate pellets and produce. If the SHTF, I look at it like this. Right now i have 175 pounds of fresh meat 100 yards from my house. If the deer get scarce, the hog or the wifes' pygmy goats better look out! After a month of MRE's that hog would look pretty damn good. 
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I like that their pen is also one of my gardens, worked up and heavily fertilized by them. Pickles continue to only use one small corner of her pen to fertilize. Damnedest thing. She is as clean as a stud horse making stud piles. She has rooted all around her pen, but I can find no evidence of her shitting anywhere but in one small corner. TRG |
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I like that their pen is also one of my gardens, worked up and heavily fertilized by them. Pickles continue to only use one small corner of her pen to fertilize. Damnedest thing. She is as clean as a stud horse making stud piles. She has rooted all around her pen, but I can find no evidence of her shitting anywhere but in one small corner. TRG LOL, couple years back I had a trio that all pooped in one corner. Corn grew GREAT there. This year's were indiscriminate poopers! Favored a different corner, but usually dropped where they were at any given moment. |
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I recall seeing a corn crib in central Texas that was lined with galvanized barn tin to keep out rats. It was, as you said, used to retain corn for livestock feed. TRG That's interesting. I've never seen that done. And THAT brings up even another point in the sustainability chain. I have a tough time keeping rats out of everything. Dog food, chicken feed, you name it. A corn crib is just a nightmare waiting to happen really. But when I was a kid, we didn't have rat infestations like we do now. But we had.....drum roll please.....barn cats. And what did we feed those barn cats? Not much. We did supplement their own hunting with the first milk we stripped from the cows when we were milking.... So....in a sustainable operation, one thing feeds another thing. Some stuff, you have to buy. But I don't know anybody, NOW, who has the circle complete. Big holes are filled with a trip to town when they need something. Heck, I'm so far down the food chain at this point that when the power goes out I have to move out of my house. That's bad. I have a long way to go. Like most folks. I wish I still had pics. It was completely lined, roof, floor, walls, doors, windows ....with galvanized (that wavy metal) sheet metal. It was carefully bent/rounded where necessary to make it completely rat proof. Damndest thing you ever saw. Supposedly it was common 'back in the day' to do this to prevent the rats from gnawing through any other material. TRG It was common back in the day, not just in the German areas, and the issue was coons as well as rats. In an otherwise run-down homestead, the rat control measures around the corn crib were usually pretty darned good. |
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I talked to both butchers and asked them how I could be sure that I got my hogs back. They both said they take that issue very seriously <snip> That's encouraging.
The prices you posted look very attractive too. Are you hauling them to the butcher yourself? (You might've said and I missed it.) |
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Well, I actually ENJOY fooling with hogs. Ya, me too. Wouldn't do this if I didn't like 'em. No way, no how. Too much time and effort wrapped up in it to do it if you don't like the animals. If I didn't like them, I'd just buy the pork from somebody else who was raising them. |
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I didn't exactly "grow up" on a farm, but once I was old enough to be any help around the farm my folks would send me to stay with one of my uncles all summer, to work on the farm in Arkansas. Both of my folks grew up on farms and thought it was important that us kids get that experience. I'm 50 now, so this was a while back to most folks, but many older than me grew up this way.
One uncle had a spring fed pond, the spring actually came out on top of a hill so they had a pond dug there. They tried raising catfish comercially for a while in the pond, but it wasn't profitable so they gave up on the catfish. We built a big hog pen in the woods below the pond, and had a constant trickle of water running into an old bathtub, from a siphon from the pond, for the hogs water. The tub was on the uphill side of the hog pen and the overflow water kept a fair sized patch down one side of the pen wet and muddy. My uncle always planted a couple of acres of squash, cucumbers, okra, etc. for us kids (me and his two sons) to pick for spending money in the summer. It depended on what the local processor was buying that year, and it was usually squash. We would pick half of the squash every day, in the morning. Then we would sit under a shade tree in the yard and cut the ends off the squash before taking them to the processor. The hogs got all those ends, and any squash that weren't fit to go to market (sometimes this was a quite a bit). We also did a lot of fishing, we would go fish at the river and catch everything from carp and buffalo to rainbow trout. The carp and buffalo went to the hogs, whole. There were some big channel cats in the old catfish pond, and we would catch a few of them every few days for supper. The fish guts and carcasses went into the hog pen. My aunt had a big garden and any excess or bad produce from the garden went to the hogs, along with anything that people didn't eat, like watermelon rinds, pea pods, etc. My grandparents place had an old fruit orchard behind the house. It hadn't been kept up and most of the fruit wasn't fit to eat, either small and stunted or full of worms and bugs, but us kids would get sent over there to pick everything we could for the hogs. One of the older sons was doing some grain farming, and I spent my share of time on the tractor, combine, or grain truck. Mostly driving the grain truck. There were grain bins in the barn for milo and cornm that were fed to the hogs and cows. The cows mostly just grazed in the pasture in the summer time, but when they were ready to butcher one they would bring it to a pen near the barn and feed it grain for a while before it went to the slaughterhouse. They butchered their own hogs, and had butchered cows before I came along, but were having cows butchered commercially by the time I came along. When they would butcher a hog, all the guts went back into the hog pen and were gobbled up by the other hogs. They usually waited until the fall when I wasn't around to butcher hogs, but occasionally would butcher one at any time, when they would run low on pork. The hog pen was built with the idea of selling the hogs, but the prices fell so much that there wasn't much profit in it, so the hogs just got eaten or bartered with neighbors. I know the mechanic that worked on the vehicles was paid in pork most of the time. All the grown men had a regular job too, I didn't know anyone who could make a living strictly from farming. As I got older I looked at it like they were working to support their farming habit, but now I realize that they were working to be able to live a lifestyle that they wanted to live. Living out in the country, largely self sufficient has its own rewards. My folks grew up during the depression, my dad's family raised chickens (2 big chiken houses) and also worked regular jobs in town, my mom's family raised strawberrries or cotton for cash, and raised a few cows and hogs for meat, and grew nearly all the rest of their food in gardens. My life today is a far cry from life on the farm. Other than the few fish I catch, some deer and wild pork ... everything else comes from Wal Mart these days. I'd like to think I could go back to that farm lifestyle if I had to (my wife grew up on a hog farm in Kansas) but it would be tough. |
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I talked to both butchers and asked them how I could be sure that I got my hogs back. They both said they take that issue very seriously <snip> That's encouraging.
The prices you posted look very attractive too. Are you hauling them to the butcher yourself? (You might've said and I missed it.) Yes. We have a stock trailer that we built. I would love to have a butcher come on site but I can't find one. Learning from your pig experiences, we built their pen where we can back the trailer up to it, add two cattle panels and open the the pen up to the trailer. We'll let the feed run out of their self feeder and start feeding in the trailer a week or so before it's time to go to camp. We went a little while ago and gave them some corn and hay. We also put some new straw out for bedding. They are happy now (and my kids can tell you the difference between straw and hay )
R. |
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I recall seeing a corn crib in central Texas that was lined with galvanized barn tin to keep out rats. It was, as you said, used to retain corn for livestock feed. TRG That's interesting. I've never seen that done. And THAT brings up even another point in the sustainability chain. I have a tough time keeping rats out of everything. Dog food, chicken feed, you name it. A corn crib is just a nightmare waiting to happen really. But when I was a kid, we didn't have rat infestations like we do now. But we had.....drum roll please.....barn cats. And what did we feed those barn cats? Not much. We did supplement their own hunting with the first milk we stripped from the cows when we were milking.... So....in a sustainable operation, one thing feeds another thing. Some stuff, you have to buy. But I don't know anybody, NOW, who has the circle complete. Big holes are filled with a trip to town when they need something. Heck, I'm so far down the food chain at this point that when the power goes out I have to move out of my house. That's bad. I have a long way to go. Like most folks. I wish I still had pics. It was completely lined, roof, floor, walls, doors, windows ....with galvanized (that wavy metal) sheet metal. It was carefully bent/rounded where necessary to make it completely rat proof. Damndest thing you ever saw. Supposedly it was common 'back in the day' to do this to prevent the rats from gnawing through any other material. TRG It was common back in the day, not just in the German areas, and the issue was coons as well as rats. In an otherwise run-down homestead, the rat control measures around the corn crib were usually pretty darned good. The thing I don't understand....or maybe I do...hmmm. It sounds like it would be hot as hell in there, and if the corn was not completely dried out––I mean exactly the right moisture content––it would cook it. That metal would be almost the equivalent of a silo. EXCEPT...it's probably not air tight. I dunno how much air flow could get in there, but some is necessary I think. I am not a grain farmer, and maybe it did cook it and they just sucked it up and dealt with it. I just have these visions of soured, cooked corn, but I'm sure that probably didn't happen very often. I'm probably overthinking it. The whole thing lined with metal though....I'd like to see that. |
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raising hogs like this is something we do to improve quality of our food and quality of our lives, and teach our children that something had to die for us to live. The skills we get are a plus, .... That works for me.
I think the same thing can be said about chickens. It will always be cheaper for me to go buy eggs from the store. But I enjoy raising chickens and I like knowing what my birds are eating and their quality of life while I'm eating their eggs. Plus the niece and nephew enjoy collecting the eggs and feeding them. It can be a pain in the butt some times but I enjoy the responsibility. |
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I recall seeing a corn crib in central Texas that was lined with galvanized barn tin to keep out rats. It was, as you said, used to retain corn for livestock feed. TRG That's interesting. I've never seen that done. And THAT brings up even another point in the sustainability chain. I have a tough time keeping rats out of everything. Dog food, chicken feed, you name it. A corn crib is just a nightmare waiting to happen really. But when I was a kid, we didn't have rat infestations like we do now. But we had.....drum roll please.....barn cats. And what did we feed those barn cats? Not much. We did supplement their own hunting with the first milk we stripped from the cows when we were milking.... So....in a sustainable operation, one thing feeds another thing. Some stuff, you have to buy. But I don't know anybody, NOW, who has the circle complete. Big holes are filled with a trip to town when they need something. Heck, I'm so far down the food chain at this point that when the power goes out I have to move out of my house. That's bad. I have a long way to go. Like most folks. I wish I still had pics. It was completely lined, roof, floor, walls, doors, windows ....with galvanized (that wavy metal) sheet metal. It was carefully bent/rounded where necessary to make it completely rat proof. Damndest thing you ever saw. Supposedly it was common 'back in the day' to do this to prevent the rats from gnawing through any other material. TRG It was common back in the day, not just in the German areas, and the issue was coons as well as rats. In an otherwise run-down homestead, the rat control measures around the corn crib were usually pretty darned good. The thing I don't understand....or maybe I do...hmmm. It sounds like it would be hot as hell in there, and if the corn was not completely dried out––I mean exactly the right moisture content––it would cook it. That metal would be almost the equivalent of a silo. EXCEPT...it's probably not air tight. I dunno how much air flow could get in there, but some is necessary I think. I am not a grain farmer, and maybe it did cook it and they just sucked it up and dealt with it. I just have these visions of soured, cooked corn, but I'm sure that probably didn't happen very often. I'm probably overthinking it. The whole thing lined with metal though....I'd like to see that. Ventilation was good, but it was hot as hell. The idea was to keep anything that couldn't fit through a hole the size of a dime out. Off the ground, with insecticide on the ground, with physical barriers to rats and coons, and the corn would last pretty well. Dry as a bone after late summer, too. |
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I think the same thing can be said about chickens. It will always be cheaper for me to go buy eggs from the store. But I enjoy raising chickens and I like knowing what my birds are eating and their quality of life while I'm eating their eggs. Plus the niece and nephew enjoy collecting the eggs and feeding them. It can be a pain in the butt some times but I enjoy the responsibility. Local supermarket sells eggs routinely for $2.29 for 30 eggs. I can't produce eggs at home for that price but I don't care because the eggs from the supermarket suck. They just aren't a good product compared with the eggs I get at home.
We jacked the trailer into the pigpen yesterday. The pigs will go on the long walk in two weeks. They're pretty big now. I was gonna measure them but didn't get around to it––maybe next weekend. Gave 'em some slops (expired canned goods and outdated dog food!) and one of them immediately decided he had to lie in the slops bucket. I think he was trying to save it for himself.....or he was just luxuriating in the foulness of the slops, dunno which. 
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