Our pigs are sent to the butcher when they reach about 250lbs (this is their live weight). Once the skin, head, organs, blood, etc. are removed, the animal is ready for processing, and is weighed. This is called the hanging weight. The hanging weight is usually about 70-75% of the live weight for pigs. Prices are based on the hanging weight (eg. $4.65/lb hanging weight). Click here to see our current pricing.

 

If you want the standard commercial cuts, a half pig yields about 60-65 lbs of actual meat in your freezer (67% of hanging weight/48% of live weight). During the butchering process, there is always some loss in the form of unusable parts (blood, skin), and non-typical parts (head, organs). Typically, consumers don’t take the whole pig, snout to tail, which accounts for some of the loss (includes the head, tail, trotters, hocks, fat, organs, etc., but you can certainly have those if you’d like!). Bones are good for soup and stew stock (or a tasty treat for your dogs). You can bake or stew the head, smoke the trotters and use hocks for soups. The fat is perfect to render down as a lard for cooking and baking, and freezes well.

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