[Matt NY]

How much meat do you get from a pig?

 

[Matt NY]

How big should the hams be?

This pig went toward 300 pounds. I got 82 pounds of lean. The guy that did it knows that this is my first time, and may have taken advantage of my ignorance. This weight includes all sausage trimmings, but not the fat just the lean.

From what I gather I got about what I was supposed to get in bacon, 18 pounds and 22 pounds of sausage trimmings. 25 ponds in ham seems awful short. He gave me two boneless, leading me to believe that he took alot of ham steaks for himself.

 

[Matt NY]

According to The Stockman's Handbook a 210 hog should hang at 150 pounds and produce 135 pounds of cuts as follows:

Hams - 24
Bacon - 20
Pork Roast - 17
Picnic & Shoulder Butts - 16
Pork Chops - 7
Pork Sausage - 8
Misc. Cuts - 7
Salt Pork - 5
Lard - 31

For larger weights the ratio should remain pretty much the same, although much over 300 pounds and the proportion of lard would increase. Note this does not seem to include the casings, brain, tongue, heart, liver or head cheese. Back when home processors used everything but the squeal, I suspect they would have gotton about 175 pounds of useable products out of that same 210 pound hog.

Does rather sound like you got taken big time.

Ken S. in WC TN

By this account it seems that I may have gotten the smaller pig at around 250 than the 300 pounder that I assumed I was getting. I figure he grabbed some ham steaks. The picnic seems to be more in line with these figures though at 18 pounds and the bacon is also close. I figure it is hard to mess with that shoulder area. I got 7 pounds of rib chops and the loin was made to a loin roast and chops totaling 12 pouds, lost some bone there and added to my susage meat, he probably grabbd some chops from here too. The total of my sausage meat, just the lean, is 22 pounds so that figures. It isn't as far out of whack as I thought if he did give the lighter one. Still a lot short though.

He is supposed to give me a quarter of beef for a half of the second pig, the other half was his fee. I am going to request an intact quarter and cut it up myself.

Thanks to all that responded.

 

[Matt NY]

I got some fat to make lard, but I didn't figure that in. I only mentioned the lean cuts. Next year I am planning on doing this myself.