Well after 5 weeks of feeding the large 665 pound boar boiled grain and apple pulp I decided to go ahead and butcher him. I am betting he was somewhere around 675 or more, he gained about 1/2 inch of fat since we have had him, no idea how much weight that might be but I figured 10 pounds would be a safe minimum estimate.
I will say one thing, a 675 pound hog is big..... really... big....
Gutting prep went pretty easy, I am pretty well setup for large animals, although I will say cutting this guy in half about gave me a heart attack. My three boys offered to help, I would take a break for 5 minutes and they would cut about 1/2 inch, then I would go and cut 5 inches, another break and 1/2 inch then I would go another 5 inches...... lol...
Each side weighed around 170# or so, hind legs had to be about 75 to 80#'s and front legs around 50 to 60#'s maybe. I Put 3 legs in the bottom of my large freezer, then put in boards and laid in one side, then more boars to keep an air gap and laid in the other side and the last leg on top, completely filling my large freezer. I tried hanging the first large hog, but it just isn't cool enough and I had to work very fast to get it processed. The second large hog, I used the freezer but did not have boards to keep the meat spaced apart and the center of the mass did not cool down enough and I had to again work very fast to get all the meat done. This time it worked beautifully having the air gaps between meat, cooled the meat down nicely.
I did one side and one hind leg today, about 220 pounds of meat and about 30 pounds of cat food (skin and sub dermal fat layer/ junk meat chunks etc).
So far I am blown away, the size of the meat cuts you can get is amazing on hog this size. I had a table full of large chops, and the hind leg made so many large roasts I lost count on them. I got around 25 to 27 pounds of thick and very, very lean bacon slab. I had a small mountain of great soup bones. The ribs on this guy were gigantic, we cooked them up for dinner along with 6 pork chops, wayyyy too much to eat eat but ohhhh sooo good.... I can say without question there is absolutely no boar taint in this guy.
It will be a little while yet before I have freezer room for another hog, but I look forward to getting another boar and testing this out again. So far so good. I can hardly believe you buy these hogs for 1 cent a pound, man what a deal.... Our meat is now the cheapest thing we have to eat, it is even cheaper than our potatoes now, and they are pretty cheap for us.
We were into this venture a total of $300 for the 1,750 #'s of hogs, the fuel to haul them, the feed we gave them and the paper and tape for wrapping. We have sold 260#'s of meat for $250 leaving us with around 1,250 #'s of meat for an out of pocket cost of about $50. That doesn't count the massive amount of time and labor, which is quite a bit. We are into our meat around 4cents a pound after all is said and done. You can't beat that.