# ??? Selling Pig Shares ???



## damummis (Jul 27, 2011)

Dh is talking about getting a few/couple pigs.  He has been talking to his clients about possible shares.  How does one figure out how much to charge per share?  Do you go by halves? Quarters?  Please enlighten me.


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## SuburbanFarmChic (Jul 27, 2011)

We sell it by hanging weight usually at processing time.  No less than a 1/2 and if people want to share it they get to divide the packages themselves.


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## damummis (Jul 28, 2011)

But what do you charge?  Per pound?  Per half?


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## SuburbanFarmChic (Jul 28, 2011)

My prices won't work for you because we are doing pastured Red Wattles and command a silly gourmet price to DC people that are willing to fork it out for "happy pork" that didn't come from the grocery store.  


   Go in the phone book and look up local butchers and ask what the hanging weight price on pork is to get exact prices.  These are all just example numbers for easy math for the explanation. 


 Say your pig weighs 200lbs live when you send it to the butcher.  Then lets say you get a hanging weight of 150lbs.  That means that each half weighs 75lbs.   If you charge a hanging weight price of 2.00 a lb then you will get $150.0 per side.  You then tell the butcher to cut for roasts or chops or ground or which ever you/your customer prefers.  After they cut it all down and trim the fat, bones etc, lets say you get 50lbs of nice neat packages of meat per side.  That means that after processing you/your customer will have paid roughly 3.00 per lb for the end result. 

You can ball park how much you might get off a pig in advance but until it is hanging at the butcher or freezer packages there is no real way to fairly price in advance unless you end up charging live weight and letting people take it to the butcher themselves.  For that call a livestock auction and get going market rate and use a weight tape to calculate live weight or a scale if you have one. 


I hope this helps.


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## damummis (Jul 28, 2011)

Thank you, it does.


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## burntmuch (Aug 15, 2011)

Not sure if this will help, but heres what I did. This year was the first time we raised pigs. I bought 2 feeder pigs. As soon as people heard I was doing it, they wanted a half a pig. So I did some estimating on how much feed & butcher cost would be for both.  I was guessing it would cost $600 to $700 from start to finish. From feeder pig to wrapped pork product.. So I charged $225 per half a pig. I sold 3 halves . Then kept 1 half for me. So my buddies paid for my half a pig. Both my pigs were around 250 lbs live weight. Each of us got 65 lbs or so of pork.  So they paid 3.45 per lb


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