Does anyone do there own butchering?

[mtngrl812]

I am curious if anyone butchers their pigs themselves? Is it a difficult process? I know a couple chickens must be nothing compared to a 250# pig. But is it a pretty big hassle for one person? Just more reasonable to taken them to a butcher?

 

[NH homesteader]

Yes it is a huge hassle for one person. In a month or two I hope to have a step by step tutorial of my husband and I doing one.

@misfitmorgan you posted pics of butchering a pot belly right? Sorry if Ihhave the wrong person. My memory has its moments...

My husband was trained to do it. Not professionally but by an experienced old timer. And it is a huge undertaking. I would never attempt it without him! Not trying to discourage but it's a big thing!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

We have butchered our own - but it was more of a group effort. My neighbor did the killing, and gutting. Several of us skinned. He quartered it up and we kept it on ice for almost a week. The next weekend we cut and vacuum packed the cuts we wanted and made sausage from the rest. It IS a big undertaking, but mostly it's just very time consuming!

 

[OneFineAcre]

The thing is you typically don't skin a pig.
You kill them, and then dip the carcass in scalding water and scrape the hair off, leaving the skin in tact.
That is difficult without the right set up.
People do skin them though.

 

[Alexz7272]

I also butcher my own. It takes my partner, father and I. We could do it just us two but my father is a massive help. I would not want to do it alone, in fact I would send it to a butcher before I did. Personally though I do not 'trust' butchers and prefer to keep everything in house. But as @OneFineAcre said, you have to have the right set up. In American I notice alot of people raise the pig then dip it in scolding water and then scrap the hair with it hanging. In Lithuania we boil the water and pour it over the skin as another scraps the hair off. I would also highly recommend getting a vacuum sealer and make sure you have a whole chest freezer ready for some pork!

 

[NH homesteader]

We skin them. Unless you are doing a pig roast no one my husband has ever butchered for has asked him to scald.

 

[Alexz7272]

@NH homesteader Woah, that must be a lot of extra work! We do not do that in Eastern Europe (we're poor and need every bit of the animal, haha) I wonder what the taste difference is?

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I can't imagine the work involved in dipping, scalding and scraping. Or even pouring boiling water over the carcass....but admittedly there is the loss of the skin when you don't. Even the slaughter houses around here won't scrape - they skin. (at least the ones I called way back then...)

 

[OneFineAcre]

Back when I was a kid, my grandfather was a small tobacco farmer.
his 2 brothers farmed down the road and his sister and her husband.
They would all raise 4 or 5 hogs and we would all get together and have a "hog killing" in the fall. So, they would kill and process like 20 in a day.
Always when the weather turned cool after we finished barning tobacco.
I sometime will go into a meeting and the conference room will be cold and I'll say "you could kill hogs in here". I get some odd looks sometimes. But, most know what I mean.

 

[Alexz7272]

@NH homesteader & @frustratedearthmother Woukd you say it a cultural thing to skin a hog? I've personally never known someone who skins them but most I know are European or South Asian. I thought it was normal to scrap, not skin.