Pork from the butcher

Shop around. Once a month our HEB grocery store has pork chops for a buck a pound. I stock up.

I get wild hogs occasionally, but store bought chops are 'sweet'.

Haven't heard of the govt. buying diddly.

My uncle, a full time farmer/rancher, has totally quit raising market hogs for the 'market', as the commission fees, hauling, and squalid prices make it unfeasible. He sells to individuals. Last month, George Foreman (the boxer) bought his last 'white' hogs of the year. Uncle makes more money on feral hogs... capturing off mined land and individuals land, and selling to canned hunt operators and wild boar butchers.

Abfab best way to save money... Kill your own wild hog... all pure profit. Don't have wild hogs, buy a market hog, kill it yourself. It's not rocket science... my pa had a foolproof way of teaching me butchering skills... cut off and throw to the dogs any piece you wouldn't want to eat... and when cutting your meat, whatever isn't on one piece will be on another.

Good luck.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Well, I trust what mine get fed as it's coming from my brother. Most farmers around here charge market price. Last hog I got came from a neighbor. I paid $100 for a hog that weighed 214 pounds. On the small side, but it was the only one they had an easy time of loading. I paid around $140 for the processing. I even paid the guy a little more than market price as I hate to spend more on processing than the actual animal. I have raised my own before feeding a lot of milk & table scraps. I may raise one or 2 again next year. I just like messing with them. There is no one around here that I know of that would ever pay $3 a pound plus processing besides.

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I can't believe I deleted it!

As you can see every area is different. What one butcher calls hanging weight can also be different then what another calls it, some remove the head and feet others don't some skin first and on and on.
We like chops,ribs and sausage so that's what we go with. Roasts and hams can be "different" then what you're accustomed to store bought both in size and taste. That's a lot of meat to have that you bought and don't like. Curing can vary tremendously from butcher to butcher, sample their work first. Nothing worse the a whole hog's worth of sausage you don't like or big cured hams.

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

I took my 2 hogs to the butcher thursday. They were both about #325 live weight. He said it would be between $150 and $200 each for processing.
This was a first for me so I didn't know what to expect. I thought it sounded reasonable enough.

We bought 1/2 beef from him last year and it was the best we have ever had compared to others we have used in the past.
I will see how these turn out.

All i know is that some of these prices on here are out of this world.Would love to sell some at these prices.Most we pay is 50.00$per hundred weight and this gives the farmer a bonus for geting it loaded in truck.(Pork Steak comes from the upper shoulder of the pig,more fat than a pork chop.

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If you are still mowing the grass then the garden needs to be bigger

Around here a steak is cut off the large end of the ham.

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

My ex-boss would slice some steaks off the ham (after curing) to be wrapped separately from the ham, and labeled as "ham steak."

The pork steaks I was originally referring to are cut off the shoulder roasts and (at least around here) are sold in the stores as either "pork steaks" or "pork shoulder steaks."

When getting cutting instructions, we would give the customer the option of having their pork shoulder roasts left as roasts or cut into steaks, or "half and half."

If the customer requested "four chops to the package," then I would put two steaks to a package, since they are bigger than chops (unless the hog was especially small) and one could normally feed two people.

$600+ per hog? WOW you guys are doing well with them.

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Roger

Maybe I should start butchering hogs, on the side. The prices some folks here are mentioning are outrageous. A couple hours of work, and get that much money?

I've never carried a hog to the butcher... and I've processed hundreds. My grandpa use to kill three to six twice a week, or even more, depending on cold spells. Twenty minutes or less to turn from a hog into a carcass. A few minutes to quarter. Hams, shoulders, ribs, bacon slabs. Grinding the sausage maybe an hour...

When we were killing lots of hogs, from live to package would take less than three hours.

Home grown 'bacon' is more trouble than it's worth...

............I could make a fortune charging these rates........

....of course, more than half of the professional costs are overhead for the safety nazis....

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

This is how I do it here. Currently boneless whole pork loins are $1.39 lb or boneless butts for 99¢ lb. Last month the prices were 10% cheaper then they currently are. But at my place these are case prices so that usually means I have to get approx 50 lbs at once. But I have a freezer so thats not a big deal.

I shifted over to buying this way rather then ½'s since I thought I was overpaying for cuts of meat, fat, bone, etc that I wouldn't normally use. Now I use butts for bbq, steaks or sausage and the loins for roast, chops and canadian bacon.

I do the same for beef, Brisket for hamburger or bbq, sirloin or ribeye loins for steaks, etc.

Yes this is mass produced factory farmed food and locally grown grassed raised is more favorful. But for the last purchase of pork the label showed that they were packed in Ga so they were somewhat local. And at the moment the dollars spent or saved on food is important.


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Hogs on pasture/grain and finished on grain at 230# roughly are .50/lb purchase hanging, .39 pound to butcher/wrap, .40/lb to smoke your hams and bacon. southern michigan right now at jerome country market. Pasture beef finished on grain is 1.75# with butcher costs the same. vacuum packed

We sell our pork for $3.50/lb by the hanging weight for whole pigs and $4.50/lb for half pigs. That is delivered to the processor. Slaughter, butcher and smoking is additional. We primarily sell to restaurants and stores making weekly deliveries but also to individuals. Here is an article that also includes a poster that shows the cuts of pork describing them:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/07...pig-share.html

Prices vary across the nation and with what the product is. Humanely raised naturally grown pastured pork is an entirely different thing than pen raised confinement pork fed corn and soy commercial feed. Commercial feeds have a history of being tainted with melamine, PCBs and other undesireable ingredients you really don't want in your meat. Yes, it costs more than CostCo. Some people prefer to pay a more for quality. It is a (semi-) free country so we all get to make those choices.

Cheers,

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

I don't know about other peoples butchers but my butcher lets the meat hang for no less than 4 days.

Wow, our tasteless Costco pork is about as expensive as highlands premium pork.

We like almost all parts of the pig including trotters, ears, the head and fatback; do any of these package deals include all parts of the hog? We are moving south in a few months and though we eventually plan on raising a couple of pigs for personal use; the first year or two we would like to buy a whole or half a pig and have it processed.

I shot a feral hog in Alabama once and about gagged butchering it; any tips Texican?

I don't know... maybe some folks on here can enlighten me. I don't know of any advantage to letting pork hang. Beef, sure, a month wouldn't be too long for a beef to hang... it gets tenderer, through the decomposition process...

If pork 'needed' to be hung for anything longer than a day, most rural southerners would never have had any pork.

anyone know?

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

No advantage to age pork.You only hold it at cold storage to chill it all the way thru,this has to be done to keep the quality of the pork good.

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If you are still mowing the grass then the garden needs to be bigger

My butcher said it's easer to cut when its chilled all the way thru.

Well I found a sort of local butcher as suggested and am going to try their locker pack. They have received great reviews over the years it seems. Funny how sometimes this kind of thing can almost be right under your nose. We have been in this area since almost the beginning of time and I've never heard of this place. It is located in an out of the way location that we just never go by in our travels, but based on the reviews they come highly recommend.

33lbs. $100

10 lbs. pork chops
6 lbs. pork roast
6 lbs. pork steaks
5 lbs. country style pork ribs
3 lbs. sausage
3 lbs. bacon

More expensive then costco but maybe better quality, I guess we will find out.

Sure if you buy 500 hogs at a time. The "pork industry" and local small producers are not the same thing at all. We raise pigs, among other things. We're not 'in the tank' and have no government buyouts or anything. We have customers lined up to buy all we can produce. We sell for $3.50/lb based on hanging weight. Processing is additional. Most of our sales are to stores and restaurants. We also sell a small amount retail and direct whole animals to individuals.

Here's an article that might be of interesting as to what is in a half pig. Do note that not every pig is the same, different lengths, different fat levels, different cut styles, but it gives an idea:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/07...pig-share.html

and here's a poster that shows a pig:



Looking at the prices people are throwing out keep in mind several things:

1) Quality varies greatly. Are you looking to buy organic, Organic, humanely raised, or do you just want protein and lipids (meat) at the cheapest possible price?

2) Prices vary greatly with location. The price of pork around the CAFOs is depressed because it is subsidized so local small producers can't compete. That's the way our economy operates. Even the same thing varies greatly in price in different locations. Processing for example, costs about 50¢/lb in some areas and $2/lb for exactly the same thing.

3) CAFO pork is subsidized by the government and cheaper but that does not reflect the full cost of the pork. It will give you the lowest possible checkout counter price. Additional costs show up in the medical care system, water quality degradation, air pollution, higher taxes to pay for subsidies, etc. Raising livestock, veggies, fruit, etc in a sustainable manner costs more so expect to pay more if you value that. The Big Ag 'pork industry' like the similar Big Ag cattle industry is heavily subsidized by subsidization of corn and soy along with the subsidized of petroleum. This is indirect but real and it helps to keep the price of food low at the checkout counter. Just don't compare apples to oranges.

4) To get the rock bottom prices go to the big super market and buy the manager's special for CAFO pork that is about to expire. It will put meat on the table and its better than starving. Been there, done that (both), which is why we raise our own.

It is a fairly free country and you can buy the cheapest thing. Buying in quantity will cut the price in most situations. Get a whole truck load of hogs and you can save big.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
Save 30% off Pastured Pork with free processing: http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project: http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

"It's the Shipping" has always been our joke on how much more expensive things were in Alaska. From the prices listed here, the Pacific Northwest prices are out of bounds compared to the South, too.
I don't raise pigs to sell ready-to-butcher because we just don't have the land, but I sell all our Berkshire weaners at 8 weeks, keeping a couple to raise for ourselves, for $125 each. Last litter, I didn't advertise at all because I had people left from January who were waiting for the next litter at that price.
The nearby, well-thought-of butcher charges $50 to kill, skin and quarter a big pig, then I do the rest of the butchering at home. Otherwise, it's $.75 per pound for cut and wrap, and I believe an extra $.45 for smoking hams and bacon. They do not have a mobile butcher, we have to deliver to them.
One of the other butchers charges an extra $7.50 to "dispose of the offal" which I would take home anyway! Most of what they dispose of is good food!!
Kit
Willamette Valley, Oregon