[Mountain]

I used to raise pigs, but I found it much cheaper to simply buy them at the sale yard. The last few years I have been buying all of my slaughter hogs at the sale yard, I buy the oversize sows in the 400# to 500# range usually for around $115 to $150 a piece. This last sale all the sows were running 600# plus so were going for a bit more and I had financial constraints as well as weight constraints on hauling them home. I wound up not buying any sows last sale. I was very tempted to buy a couple large boars though, one went for $5.00 weighing in at 785 pounds the other went for $6.75 weighing in at about 675 pounds.

I figured at those prices I really can't go wrong but all I had that day was my 1/2 ton truck with the canopy on it for hauling them... along with 400 pounds of child weight and 350 pounds of grocery weight not including my weight and the wifes of another 350 pounds. I decided to wait on buying anything until next sale and go ahead and set up my long flatbed trailer, I figured even my two horse trailer would not have enough room with three to four hogs of these sizes.

At that price I cannot go wrong on the meat, but I could go wrong not anticipating potential challenges with this.....

My first concern was with having intact boars mixed with sows in a trailer driving down the highway, I don't know if there would be any problem or not but I certainly wouldn't want to take the chance. I figure I will build four separate pens on the long trailer with gates so that I can separate the hogs into their own little 5ft x 7ft areas.

I have built some very heavy penning here at the ranch that should easily hold up to this size hog.

With that all figured out, back to the potential of boar taint..... My wife had a pig growing up that they used for breeding that they slaughtered and ate at about 1,000 pounds, she said he didn't taste any different than Petunia the sow did. Her uncle Mark and his wife just slaughtered their breeding boar last year at just over 1100 pounds and he tasted just fine.

What are your experiences with large hog/transportation, slaughtering and processing? I hate surprises, especially when they cause me trouble or cost me money........ am I missing any potential surprises here....

 

[Mountain]

This forum is like walking around a ghost town, blow a lil dust off a thread here and there, too bad... As to the answer to my question I am about to find out, I bought three hogs at the sale yard yesterday. I picked up a 665 pound board for $6.65, 640 pound sow for $140 and a 450 pound boar for $18. I will be starting with the small boar today and let him hang for about two days before I process him out, with the day time temps in the upper 80's into the lower 90's, and the air being so smoky you can't see but about a half mile, I don't feel comfortable leaving it hang to long, all the other hogs I have done,I have generally hung for about 3 days in freezing winter and they worked out quite well so two days should work.

I kind of feel like I am talking to myself here.......... lol

 

[havasu]

My apologies to you sir. As with any young forum, members are what makes the forum interesting. We are actively recruiting folks to join, but it is a slow process. Please do us a favor and tell your friends about this forum, and hopefully you will get the responses needed.

 

[Mountain]

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.

 

[havasu]

That is amazing. Have you seen the cost of bacon at a store? It is ridiculous.

 

[Mountain]

Woops, I need to revise my 1,250 pounds of meat, that included the cat food... We have right at 1,000#'s of usable meat out of these hogs, not 1,250, we save the skin and fat and any junk bits of meat/gristle for cats and package and freeze it. Saves us a lot on cat food, cat food runs us about .40 cents a pound so doing this feeds the cats better than ever and we don't have to spend the $35 a month buying cat food anymore.

I cook up about 4 pounds of skin and fat tissue with the old soup bones and meat bones and other household left overs for the cats about every three or four days and they are healthier than ever and now saving about $400 a year in cat food costs.... It is pretty bad when you can feed your cats meat for less than it costs to buy cat food...