Greetings, I'm a newby to this forum. Tried to post earlier and it didn't come out. Huh. I recently purchased two young hogs. Though I've raised dairy goats, chickens,rabbits and the such, this is big time for me. I did however castratrate one of them per internet instructions and it turned out fine, (of course thats my opinion. Not the pigs). Anyway any thoughts on the best resources ie: books, pamphets etc. on how to butcher into retail cuts my hogs come fall? Thank you. Noel
Welcome to the forum. I too, am raising my first pigs and I'm sure that you'll hear from many folks here. I plan to do my own butchering too, as that is my opinion of homestead: doing as much at home as possible. I found some good info in Raising the Homestead Hog. I plan to get a butchering book the name of which escapes me at the moment.
Hi Noel, welcome to the forum! We raise hogs, sell and butcher our own. It's not too hard and the more you do, the easier it gets. One book that might help you out a little is Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game by John H. Mettler, Jr. D.V.M.. It shows how to butcher and some of the cuts you will want to make. It also has some recipes for sausage, scrapple etc.. A fairly good site here on the net is http://members.tripod.com/~BayGourmet/pig.html This site has some good points. If you are going to cure and smoke your bacon and hams, we have discussed this several times here on the forum and will be glad to help you when the time comes. I like to brine cure hams, injecting AND soaking them. The Morton company makes cures that are really easy to use, everything is included. As I mentioned, it's not all that hard to do, if you don't want to scald and scrape your hogs, skinning them works great too. If you have ever cleaned deer, a hog won't be that much different. Best of luck to you. Matt, That's the way I feel about it too, I do as much for myself as I can. Homegrown, homeprocessed food can't be beat!
