I know I have read a lot of threads on raising pigs here the last few months.thought I would share my experience of one of the three my boys and I raised. He was turned in last Tuesday night at our local fair for carcass class. He weighed in live weight at 296 lbs. that night. He was slaughtered the following morning with a hanging weight of 211 lbs. got the call last night that all of the unsmoked cuts and sausage was finished and ready to be picked up. The total for non smoked meat weight was 90 lbs even. Cuts were the usual loins, roast, chops and sausage(breakfast patties, links, Italian links and Italian bulk). The hams and bacon will be ready next week. They actually still smoke the meat, not the liquid smoke dipped way. I will get 41 lbs of hams cut in half and 23 lbs of bacon.

That brings my meat total to 154lbs of fresh and smoked pork that is shrink wrapped and prepared. Also got 26 lbs of lard from the remainder off of the pig also that I can use to mix in with deer summer sausage or burger this fall. Not sure if this is a good ratio or not due to this being the first time I have done this. The butcher shop total was $202 out the door. I paid $100 for the pig, I had another $163 in store bought feed of 14-16% protein pellets. Bringing my total to $465 for everything but not the gas to transport him to and from. So for around $3.01 a pound I raised a pig up and had him butchered. Seems like a decent price for a hormone free natural pork meat. Any body have any input on how I could save so more money or how I ended up doing on this project? All in all the boys and I had a really good learning experience doing it and the sausage we cooked up for lunch was the best sausage I have ever eaten. Even my wife commented on how good it was.

I have no words of wisdom, so I'm going to just tag this and follow along.

No scrapple?

Lol No, no scrapple. Sorry.

Cool. Tagged.

Skip the store-bought feed products and buy bulk from a feed-mill. Most mills in my area offer the reusable bulk feed bags (75-100 lbs per bag) for free. Bulk feed prices are significantly lower than retail bagged feeds in the store.

Supplement feed with other stuff. Pigs will eat anything, any food packagers etc nearby that may have waste products you can latch onto? The Seyferts potato chip plant in Ft. Wayne used to sell wagon loads of rejected potato chips pretty cheap; most people would feed them to pigs... you can also supplement with garden grown things, table scraps etc... or pasture your pigs...

Krispy Kreme doughnutts

I don't know if old bread would be a good or not but maybe.


I can remember back when I was in school they would give away their food scrapes to a pig farmer.

Agreed, floor sweepings and any scrap foods save a bunch of money. Also check with your local dairies to see if you can acquire some waste milk. That fattens em right up.

Feed was bought at a local feed mill 500lbs at a time. Pigs were fed vegetable scraps including apples from a few of my early apple trees I have. Not really wanting to feed old breads and doughnuts to a pig I'm gonna eat, I was told it adds more fat than muscle. I asked around at a few local feed stands and got some old veggies from them. I plan on handing out some chops to them as a thank you and to keep that line open. I have a local butcher that processes the same way that I could have used that would have saved me around $30 or so and an hour of drive time. But this other butcher donates some time and money back to our 4h club. So trying to support them to. Next year I'm going to switch though just for my own time savings.

I never raised hogs so what i am about to say is not worth much. I used to feral hog hunt. i would skin and dress out the hogs myself.
I had a place that only charge me $25 a hog to cut up and then charge me something like 10 cents a pound to package. it was dirt cheap.

If you were to slaughter the hog yourself and have where they just do the butchering part how much would you save?

I've seen guys here that have rails built up about 5' above the edge of their pickup bed just so they can load all the way up with out of date bread to feed the hogs.

That's a lot of bread! I'm sure that would put some weight on pigs quick, I hear use dairy to if you can get it. I just don't have any access to some yet.

Learn to butcher the animal yourself, that's about all I could suggest. Sounds like you did pretty good, otherwise!

There is one thing about farming,   it's built in prepping

I think the person that told you that doesn't want you stepping in on their free/cheap bread products...

It may add a higher fat:muscle ratio but that's because the grain is already partially processed which makes it easier for the pig to digest more calories out of the meal. If you're worried about adding too much fat then I have a suggestion for you. We did this with some pigs several years ago that "outgrew" their date with the butcher. They got a bit on the big side and we ran out of feed 2 weeks before their butcher date. Not wanting to get another batch of feed ground dad just pulled whole-corn out of the bin and fed them nothing but whole corn those last 2 weeks. The whole corn slimmed them back down a little bit; the butcher commented that he was surprised they had grown so big without getting overly fat. We told him how we did it and he said he was going to start doing that with his own pigs...

The body fat has a lot more to do with age and body size than diet... most commercial pigs for slaughter don't go over 270lb or so last I knew. This is because once they get up around that age/size they start putting on more fat than muscle. You should be fine feeding breads etc to supplement their diet, just don't let them go too long, and if you do, put them on a lower calorie diet...

I raised 2 pigs this last winter. Got them nov.21, butchered in march and april. Estimated live weight was 325 and 296 lbs. Can't remember actual processed meat weight, but came to about 91 cents a pound. All feed mill feed and table scraps.
The added cost is paying for processing. It can triple or more the total cost. I did it all in the back yard. Packed the big primal cuts in ice in an old freezer for a few days and broke them down a piece a day. Realized a huge savings over paying to process and no headache moving them. Best pork ever.

I think finding the right packer/butcher is the key to coming out looking good without doing the work yourself.

Not that I can't do the work myself, but a butcher shop is so much faster and more efficient than I am. They have all the necessary supplies and processes down so they can do it better.

IE, they have all the real-deal equipment; I can't cut my own pork chops easily because I don't have a meat saw... To make bacon/ham I have to fire up my smoker for 1 or 2 hams, they do it for 10-20 at a time.

When I get pigs processed the processing doesn't ever break $1/lb... that's for custom processing. I can't even come close to justifying the hassle of messing with a 300 lb hog for less than $1/lb processing....

That being said, a few tips on not paying an arm and a leg. First find a good custom meat processor; not a retail place that has a butcher room in the back, but a place that makes their entire business on custom meat processing for others. Don't get all the "filly stuff". Example: at my processor its $.25/lb to grind, season, & stuff bratwurst; if you want cheese chunks in your bratwurst it's $1.10/lb extra (that not just the weight of the cheese, thats the weight of the bratwurst). WOW! The price really went up to get that cheese added in there; I don't think anybody needs cheese that bad... Ask for a price-sheet up-front on what things cost. Most places have them, even if it's just a basic printed piece of paper it shows you what it's going to cost...

What about raising a hog for the butcher in exchange for processing?

Thats not a bad idea. I love to barter.