Farm Economics - The Pig Lesson

There's also the matter of timing. My uncle and cousin are shipping 90-100 fat pigs every week. Most of this fall they've been getting $60-70 for 250-270 lb fats. These are going into Quebec but there are pigs going into Pennsylvania at the same price. They're losing about $60/pig. You should be able to get a freezer pig VERY cheap.

70% is about the average meat yield for modern genetics. The older genetics were 50-60%.

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Too many variables... BUT...

I agree with the well respected gentleman from East-Central Ontario... Timing is important.

This is an ad from this weeks paper:

Young pigs, 20 weeks old, 50-75 pounds, $30 each. 419-736-2140.

http://www.tradingpostnewspapers.com/

We paid substantially more earlier in the year.

If you can get a 75 lb pig for $30.00, you're off to a good start.

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I always loved my Mom's stories about growing up in rural Ontario in the 20's and 30's. One of them was about how my Grandpa got a free pig for his family every year. He'd buy two little pigs in the spring and raise them on scraps, excess milk from the family cow, garden produce and some purchased grain. Come fall, he would sell one and that money covered his original investment and the cost of the corn. The other was for the family's use... and that free pig saw them through some very lean years.

Now I know times change... but IF one knew someone who would be happy to buy that second, naturally fed pig... wouldn't something like this still make economic sense for the small homesteader?

Friday evening I priced some porkers... a 200lb sow and 7 ~80lb shoats... they were free... I was waiting for a buck to come out... Unfortunately, the hogs spooked the buck, he never came out in the open, and the hogs meandered back in the woods... Potential cost of the pig meat? 40c per animal (price of a bullet). Processing fee, free... I do 'er myself.

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Not ta butt in but as we raise our hogs to be lean 70% is the figure we have been hitting for the last 4 years.

We always have a couple of extras to sell or should I say ordered and paid
for before we start ours so we basically get our meat for free.

We don't feed any meat scraps or meat byproducts.

Costs of the pen and equipment was figured on the first load of hogs we sold and ate so we don't figure depreciation.

We have 10 acres and raise our sheep and hogs and a large garden to provide for us during the year and it works fine for now.

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Some good discussion here and I can't keep up with the numbers. General consensus seems to be that my figures are too high. I had to look up a number of them on the Illinois extension office website ... if their numbers are wrong it's their error. If my math is wrong it's my error.


So to pluck out a few common themes from the replies ...

-Timing is everything. Buying a larger animal for cheaper is key to profit
-Having multiple animals in a pen at feeding time cuts your cost to labor
-The price I pay for meat is too high and the price of the feed is substantially lower than the numbers I pulled down
-Some figures are in dispute, but not the equation itself
-There are intangible factors that can't be quantified that add positives to the doing it yourself

Can we come to a general consensus from this discussion that, provided you can line everything up at the right time, it IS easier to do it yourself than to purchase it? Of course arguing this point in a homesteading forum is like trying to preach the virtues of swimming at your local swimming pool.

How can they afford to lose $60 per pig every week? I think I would stop raising them after a few weeks of that!!

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Depends if you want pork, or something more. My uncle's cost of production is in the low $120s, to get about 180 lbs of meat. That includes feed (mostly homegrown), genetics (farrow to finish), buildings, ALL labour, all of their quality control program (not HACCP but very similar, regular inspections, on-farm feed mixing inspections, logs, random feed tests, mandatory vet inspections), trucking, etc. etc. In GOOD times they can get about $40 above that, in bad times they're losing $60, on average if they can make $2-3 they're doing well. Add on the processing and it's still pretty cheap.
You can raise 2 or 3 hogs fairly cheaply until one dies, then your formula goes out the window.
We have some of my grandfathers records from the 30s and 40s. He used to be able to average about 60% profit on each hog he raised. When Dad raised hogs in the 60s he was down to about 20%. Now 2% is good. When margins get that lean there isn't much room for error.

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This is what they do for a living, they have over $1million invested. They aren't going to walk away that easily, they'll go as far as their creditors will let them and hope prices rebound so they can make it up later. They can't do it much longer though.

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I see you twist your own words as bad as you twist mine. In this thread you didn't discuss ease you discussed cost.

Cost! I mean cost. Not ease. Gah. That's not Freudian or nothing.

Imperfect, is this thought transmission of humans using words.

Yep sorta the issue I delt with

Sometimes money isn't everything. The satisfaction of knowing what you're eating and feeding your family can be valuable.

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Dispatches From The Conservative Underground

I like having a few pigs back there in the pen.

We feed scraps from the kitchen and garden. They also get some feed a local farmer mixes for us by the ton. If they grow a bit slower, we wait a bit longer. We also let them get over 240, usually around 300 or slightly more.

We do all our butchering, smoking, wrapping. Everyone should learn how. Handing over that money to a butcher at the end of your journey would kill any savings. A hog is not hard to process. We kill one cool afternoon and cut and wrap the next morning.

So a lot of folks ARE doing this, profitably and economically. So far the one report comes from folks trying to do it on an industrial scale and losing $60 per pig, but the homesteaders doing a handful of pigs are coming out ok.

Tells you something, don't it?

Yep it tells you that most people waste enough for a few pigs

Exactly!!

I usually get 2 or 3 pigs in the spring. I can buy them weaned from a neighbor for about $10-$20. He gets his feed by the semi load in bags, so I get my feed through him for $3-$5 a bag. Instead of the $10 plus a bag at the local mill. My pigs get a lot of scraps. Excess eggs in the spring when the chickens are laying well. Excess goat milk in the spring when I have way more than I need. Garden scraps all summer & whatever scraps from the house. Processing for a whole hog here is about $150. Selling the extra one helps offset the costs of feed, etc., but knowing what the pig has eaten & how is was raised is priceless. I love to be able to pass the meat section at the store.

We also raise our own chickens & rabbits. With all the recalls in the store all the time, I am glad to have my own meat in the freezer. Beef we get from my brother-in-law & it is pasture raised with very little grain. It ends up costing us less than $3 per pound. There isn't much at the store that you can buy for less than that. We get all the good cuts & the satifaction of knowing it hasn't been given hormones.

Some things you can't put a price on.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

Which is it? 2 pounds or 4? You got to have your numbers correct before you teach a lesson. If the actual is 4 pounds, you're going to need a lot more scraps.
And if you expect the pig to gain 190 pounds in 120 days you better feed more than 2 pounds a day, pigs are good but I'm not sure they convert that well.

I'm all for doing it on the farm myself, I raise a steer every year in a way that I feel pays. I haven't tried pigs yet but if the wife gets all 3 goats milking we will be seeing how pig economics works out for us for sure.

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I can buy locally-grown, everything-but-certified-organic pork from a small farmer for $2.38 per pound, including processing costs.

Which makes me pretty happy because I hate pigs except when I am eating them!

Chickens, on the other hand...gosh, THEY are expensive. $2.45 a pound for pastured chickens. But the taste can't be beat. Good thing I am still eating my own chooks that have been in the freezer since before we moved.

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"I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something.What I can do, I ought to do. And by the grace of God I will do." -Lou Holtz

Can you actually put a price on your health? As many have said, it's about the lifestyle and health, you know what you are eating, you don't know what kind of hormones went into the meat you buy at the store, etc.

The actual cost of raising a pig vs. buying in the store, price per lb., is not comparing apples to apples simply because you cannot put a price on the difference in nutritional value.

Then there is the satisfaction of knowing you personally had a hand in putting that food on the table, and the enjoyment of raising your own food.

Some are lucky to have others around to do the labor part, and are able to know where that food came from, and how it was raised and fed, but others are not so lucky, so this is the best bet for those who want to know where their food came from. I feel, even if you buy a whole hog from the local butcher, you still don't know where it came from...

The history channel has a very interesting Modern Marvels about the pig, it's history, and current production. I highly recommend watching it.

Though I don't yet have a pig, there is no comparison for me...

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Michelle

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