Killed him yesterday. 390lb live weight, 256lbs hanging (65% yield). Started this morning, got all but the last back ham section worked up. Get that tomorrow, along with grinding regular breakfast sausage, 10lb of Italian for pizza topping, and 25lb of summer sausage to snack on for the next year. 45 lbs of bacon will go in stone crocks to start curing for 5-6 days, two picnic hams and some smaller ones cut out of the butt hams will also go in brine in crocks.....take about 7-9 days on them. Then back to cutting firewood to fill shed for the winter of 22-23. Never a lack of things to do around here.
There is nothing better than pork from your own farm. I can't even eat store bought pork anymore. It's been a few years since we raised some but I got a local farmer and meat processor so that's second best.
We have 5 acres surrounded by national forest we hunt. Wild pigs are a problem and can hunt year round usually this time of year put one or 2 in the freezer.
What do I know about pigs? Nothing from hands on experience. A few years ago I bought a yearling, best bacon I ever ate, from a small farm in PA. The farmer told me she did not like to let the hogs get much over 200#, too much feed and fat, with diminishing returns. Different breed, perhaps? And if you are anywhere near Nashville I would love to buy 15 #s of that bacon.
Typical market weight for pigs is 225-275lb. The PA farmer is correct...the feed conversion to weight does drop off after that, which is why most go to market at that weight. I let mine get bigger because it does give us more fat (a 200lb pig is LEAN) to render into cooking lard, and I believe the hams/top loins are bigger as well. I'm at the other end of the State, almost in North Carolina.
Wife making/canning breakfast sausage today to save some freezer room: Summer sausage made from 15lbs of our beef from freezer + 10lbs of fresh pork shoulder: ]
Ran across a YouTube that sorta shows what I mean about smaller chops/etc. Go to around the 8 minute mark where he is cutting out the chops, and look at the size of the actual meat (there is more fat than you'll see on mine because they scalded and scraped this pig, where I skin mine and lose about 1/2 that outer layer of fat in the process). The compare to mine out of about twice the weight pig. The meat to bone ratio is MUCH larger because (I think) the pig was allowed to grow out more. Look at the meat on my chops.....it's nearly twice what the one in the video has. It costs more, because the weight to feed conversion drops off after mid 200lbs......but the trade off is way more meat. When you consider you're gonna throw away a certain amount of bone, skin, guts, etc, IMHO, raising a larger animal is a better overall way to go. Same with beef. Lot of people take a yearling beef and kill it at 700-900lbs. Waste of animal to me.....I want mine to go 18mo to 30 months, and be in the 1400-1600lb live weight range....but it costs more in feed, time, etc to do that, which is why most don't. But you get a superior beef, again, in my opinion.
