ADVENTURES IN  RAISING PIGS

by Wanda & Jay Lynch

BUTCHERING
BUTCHERING

Pigs are around five or six months old when they are butchered or around 240 pounds live weight. The perfect dressed weight for a pig is 180-200 pounds.

Figure on about one fourth of the pig's live weight being waste. When we first got into raising pigs, we would hire a kill truck to come out and they would do all the work and take the meat to their shop to be hung and then cut and wrapped. It is kind of expensive though and so Jay decided to start doing the butchering himself. Of course he experimented on our own pigs and not the ones we were selling!

He talked to several people who have done it and even got some pointers from the guy who owned the kill truck.

 

 

Then one weekend my brother in law came out and they did their first butchering. Jay uses a 22 rifle and says that is the way to go. It is light and easy to use. Immediately after shooting them, Jay would stick them with a knife to bleed them out. Jay used our tractor to lift them out of the pens and then set them on a platform that was supported by two saw horses to make the skinning easier. The professionals just skinned them on the ground but Jay preferred to lay them on an operating table!! Some people prefer to scrape them and that requires placing them in boiling water. We didn't chose to do this as we were not interested in pork rind.

The first pig Jay skinned, he cut too deep into the fat and got some of the meat. But as he did more pigs, he became quite good at it! If you go too deep when skinning, it can affect the bacon (that is the hardest and most delicate part of the skinning)! But our butcher praised him and said he did a pretty good job!!
After the pig was skinned, Jay would raise it up with the tractor and gut it. Then he would cut it in half, wash it off good, and load it into the back of our truck.

We laid sheets down in the bed of the truck to lay the pig on to keep it clean. Then he took them to the butcher to be cut and wrapped and smoked.

Having the right type of knife helps tremendously when skinning and keeping it sharp makes the skinning go much smoother!!

 

Jay did the skinning right along the road where the pens were and he got some pretty funny looks a couple times.

 Once a car load of girls went by and you could hear them screaming "Gross!!!" even with their windows up. The best time to butcher is when it is still cool outside so you don't have to worry about the meat not cooling and there aren't any bugs. It's much cleaner too if there is still snow on the ground (if you are lucky enough to have snow!).

Afterwards Jay would haul the skin and organs out to the back 40 either on the snowmobile or tractor and let the coyotes feast. When the kill truck came, it had a compartment underneath the truck that held all the waste and they hauled it off for free.