# Off Topic-any advice for slaughtering pigs?



## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Hey everyone, this is kind of off topic but I have raised 2 pigs this year that are getting close to butchering weight. I've never slaughtered or butchered pigs before so I was wondering if anyone has any advice-I have butchered lambs, beef, deer, elk and antelope so I'm not new to the butchering part, just new to pigs! I'm planning to stun them with a .22 shot to the brain and then cut their throats to bleed them out. I have a few friends that are going to help out also so I will have a bit of manpower behind me. Thanks for any advice/stories that anyone has!


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

You gonna skin em or scald em?


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## Packout (Nov 20, 2007)

I am no expert, but a guy who rents a farm house from us also has slaughtered for 25 years. He said you can not just slit a pig's throat. I raised a couple pigs 2 years ago for a backyard roast. Killed them when they were around #140. I shot it with a 22 then quickly hung the pig by its back feet. He punctured the heart/sac area. He ran the knife just above the brisket and "stuck" the knife into some area that poured blood like - well - a "stuck pig". I have never seen so much blood pour so fast out of an animal. Simply slitting the throat does not bleed a pig well enough. Seemed like good advice after watching the outcome. 

After killing them we scrubbed them with warm water and gutted them. Then we scorched the hide with a propane weed-burner torch, until it blistered, and scraped them with cleavers. That took about 10 minutes per pig (which was a lot faster than we expected)

And the pig roast was incredible.


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Wyo-I was only planning to scald/scrape 1 or 2 back legs for making ham, the rest I was going to just skin. 
Packout-I know you have to run the knife deep, the goal being to sever the aorta. I think I have a pretty good idea where the heart sits in relation to the breastbone, but it will be an adventure!


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## Kingfisher (Jul 25, 2008)

we raised a few pigs when i was in high school but always sent them out for butcher... was taught how to load a pig in a truck once... the old feller came to pick about 4 of em up for graduation at porkeys smoked rib house...he had something to do and told me to load em up whilst he was away for about 1/2 an hour or so. i chased those pigs all over the the place and never got a single one up the ramp and into the truck. not one. looking back i bet it was a very funny sight watching me run all over chasing pigs... the feller came back and laffed. took a 5 gallon bucket from the back of the truck and said, watch this, got one pig gently cornered in the pen and then in one swoop slapped that bucket over its head and grabbed its little curly tail. immediately that pig began to back up fast, he guided the pig by its tail right up the ramp and into the truck where it stayed. nabbed the second pig just as fast. had them all loaded in less than 5 minutes.

so, cant help with the butchering but if you have to load em ... take a bucket.


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## Cooky (Apr 25, 2011)

See if you can find a book called Small Scale Pig Raising by Dirk van Loon. It has a good section on slaughtering and butchering, very in depth. I imagine it’s out of print, my copy is from 1978. I use the feed formulas.


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## MadHunter (Nov 17, 2009)

I have not done this in over 20 years, since grandpa passed on so I am well out of practice but this is what I remember about the kill.......
* Corner the pig and blind it with a bucket or throw a burlap sack over it.
* Tie the hind legs together and hoist it up. Keep it blinded (very important)
* Rub the left armpit and you will find a hole in the rib cage.
* Stick him towards the center of the body with a long fillet knife, about a foot long.
* Rotate the knife to open the wound and allow the blood to flow and drain. It will be messy.
* If you stuck him right he will drain in about 2 to 3 minutes
* You can now proceed to scald or skin

Keep in mind that if you put a bullet in the head you will have a harder time draining the blood. Pigs have a very strong heart and your best bet is to use it. If you put a bullet in porky's head you will stop the heart and have a tougher time gettin it to drain especially as the blood cools. Good luck with it man.


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## elk22hunter (Sep 7, 2007)

You want to kill them at 250 lbs minimum and 280 maximum. That is the "Market" prime weight. Unless you are trying out a new broadhead and want to do some testing, I would call the buthcher shop and they will come out to your farm, kill it, and skin it to haul it back to the cooler and it is a done deal. They can then do the curing as well and you don't have to have the entire pig be natural. The bacon and the hams are cured. A ham un cured is called a pork roast. If you like those better then have at it. It is just too dang cheap to have them do it all than to do it yourself and think that you are saving money. It is about $100 for un cured meat and about $120 to add the cureing.


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Some good advice guys. My main reason for raising my own pigs is I've always wanted to try to make my own bacon and sausage, so I'm not looking to involve a pro butcher. Sounds like I need to invest in a longer knife for bleeding out.


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## OPENCOUNTRY (Jan 25, 2009)

elk22hunter said:


> You want to kill them at 250 lbs minimum and 280 maximum. That is the "Market" prime weight. Unless you are trying out a new broadhead and want to do some testing, I would call the buthcher shop and they will come out to your farm, kill it, and skin it to haul it back to the cooler and it is a done deal. They can then do the curing as well and you don't have to have the entire pig be natural. The bacon and the hams are cured. A ham un cured is called a pork roast. If you like those better then have at it. It is just too dang cheap to have them do it all than to do it yourself and think that you are saving money. It is about $100 for un cured meat and about $120 to add the cureing.


Dang! you know your stuff! you know it well!!


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

I'm cutting up my elk, wishing I was duck hunting and wishing some lame butcher was doing the meat processing for me.  Not really, if I have the time I prefer to do it myself. 

Good on you pumpgunner to take on raising and processing a couple hogs. You won't learn much if you have others do everything for you. 

I grew up on a hog farm in Illinois. We butchered 2 hogs in April and 2 again in October, every year. One hog (sans the loins) would be made into whole-hog sausage and the other was cut and wrapped. We quit curing hams and bacon when I was in grade school, but I still do a little of it, hams, Canadian Bacon, pastrami, corned beef. Much of our sausage was stuffed into the hog's small intestines and then canned in jars. As a young lad I got the job of cleaning the small intestines out. :x We all shared turning the handle on the sausage grinder. 

The hogs were stunned with a .22; a 1906 Winchester to be exact. The animal was penned up, quiet, and the shot was behind the ear, quartering the brain. While the heart was still pumping the hog was stuck in the neck and the main artery was severed. Then we picked up the hog with our end loader (manurer spreader tractor) and hoisted it up to bleed out. The hog that bled out the best was cut and wrapped. The other was made into sausage. We quit scalding hogs when I was young, but I did quite a few later when and buddy and I had a hog cooking spit for hire in the 70s.

Scalding a hog or even the hams can be a pain in the butt the first time. Get a bell scraper, they are only $15 bucks. If not use the backside of a butcher knife. Put lime in the scalding water to help lift and loosen the hair. Don't get the water too hot. I can't remember the temperature; just ask Mr Google.

More later, my meat's getting hot.


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## BPturkeys (Sep 13, 2007)

elk22hunter said:


> You want to kill them at 250 lbs minimum and 280 maximum. That is the "Market" prime weight. Unless you are trying out a new broadhead and want to do some testing, I would call the buthcher shop and they will come out to your farm, kill it, and skin it to haul it back to the cooler and it is a done deal. They can then do the curing as well and you don't have to have the entire pig be natural. The bacon and the hams are cured. A ham un cured is called a pork roast. If you like those better then have at it. It is just too dang cheap to have them do it all than to do it yourself and think that you are saving money. It is about $100 for un cured meat and about $120 to add the cureing.


Head Cheese and Pig Feet included?


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Thanks for the info Wyogoob! Some good advice there. I hope you're not doing your elk by yourself, it usually takes my family about 5 or 6 hours to process a whole elk, that's with my father in law and I cutting and my wife and her mom and sister wrapping and freezing! That would be a huge job for one guy. It's always been really important to us to do our meat ourselves, this year we ended up having to take our elk quarters to a butcher in Moab due to the warm weather in September, that stung a bit. We still kept the backstraps and tenderloins on ice and got them home in time to start aging them. I'm actually getting excited to try all this out, if all goes well I'll be sitting at my kitchen table on a snowy morning soon eating some homemade sausage!


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## Pops2 (Jul 28, 2010)

you don't need a super long knife. i use a 7" bladed K-Bar for hog hunting & it'll open the heart of a 300# boar w/o any problem.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Pumpgunner said:


> Thanks for the info Wyogoob! Some good advice there. I hope you're not doing your elk by yourself, it usually takes my family about 5 or 6 hours to process a whole elk, that's with my father in law and I cutting and my wife and her mom and sister wrapping and freezing! That would be a huge job for one guy. It's always been really important to us to do our meat ourselves, this year we ended up having to take our elk quarters to a butcher in Moab due to the warm weather in September, that stung a bit. We still kept the backstraps and tenderloins on ice and got them home in time to start aging them. I'm actually getting excited to try all this out, if all goes well I'll be sitting at my kitchen table on a snowy morning soon eating some homemade sausage!


I am doing my elk by myself, the wife is not feeling well. If I have the time to do it the way we like it, I enjoy it. If I'm pressed for time or have to work thru the night, I don't much care for it. I will take it to a butcher if I have to though. If a butcher charged 2¢ per pound, I would still try to cut it up myself. Nothing against wild game meat cutters, I just want it "my way".

Speaking of head cheese; are you going to process the head? Render lard?..............That's funny. I wonder how many here have ever rendered lard.


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

I'm deciding what to do with the head. I know I will save and smoke the ears as treats for my dog, I've never actually eaten head cheese so I'm not sure if I want to attempt it or not. My mom was telling me about my great grandparents making head cheese and souse, maybe I should try to revive the tradition! I would love to render lard but I'm not sure my wife would ever actually allow me to cook with it. I will probably end up saving as much fat as I can for sausage making, we also have some ground elk in the freezer that's going to become sausage when I get some fat on hand. 
Another question-does pork benefit from hanging and aging, or is it better to just process it right away?


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

I prefer souse over head cheese. You can cook a head and make both though, there's plenty of meat. 

Rendering lard is not fun, even if you have a lard press. 

Process a hog as soon as you can.

Have fun.


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## StillAboveGround (Aug 20, 2011)

Pumpgunner said:


> Some good advice guys. My main reason for raising my own pigs is I've always wanted to try to make my own bacon and sausage, so I'm not looking to involve a pro butcher. Sounds like I need to invest in a longer knife for bleeding out.


Good for you! Yes good advice... most of the important points have been covered...
But you will learn more as you DIY, No substitute for getting your hands dirty (pun intended)...

I have also killed and bled them by tying their back feet, hanging them them up by the feet and cutting the throat. Messy Job, but someone has to do it.


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## ram2h2o (Sep 11, 2007)

When I was a youngster back in Mississippi, my dad and grampa would use a special curved bladed butcher knife to "stick" the pigs. Have to go in a cut the artery going to the heart. They would tie the pigs mouth shut, because Mother and Granma did not like to hear the pigs squealing when they were stuck. On big hogs they shot it in the head first then stuck it.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

ram2h2o said:


> When I was a youngster back in Mississippi, my dad and grampa would use a special curved bladed butcher knife to "stick" the pigs. Have to go in a cut the artery going to the heart. They would tie the pigs mouth shut, because Mother and Granma did not like to hear the pigs squealing when they were stuck. On big hogs they shot it in the head first then stuck it.


Interesting.


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Update-did both pigs in yesterday. Shot to the brain with a .22 and a quick artery cut and it was all over, fortunately everything went very smoothly and both pigs went out without a struggle. A long day cutting meat but it was all worth it, thanks again everybody for the advice! Now I've got to go start mixing up a rub for the bacon......


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## hattrick (Aug 29, 2011)

I just stumbled on to this thread, its pretty great to learn random things that peak my curiosity. When i get enough land this sounds like something I may have to try.


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## Oldtimehtr (Sep 27, 2007)

Interesting topic even if it is "off-topic." Brought back some fond memories from sixty-odd years ago when I was a wee tyke. Hog slaughterin' was a common family event. I remember a time when my Grandpa had slaughtered a pig and left the head out on the ground. I was the proud owner of a genuine Red Rider BB gun and I couldn't reisit a shot at that pig head. Got 'im right between the eyes.... and the BB came back and got me right between the eyes. Thought I had been hit with a .06. Tough go to explain to my Mom how I got the big red knot between my eyes. Lesson learned: never shoot a pig head with a BB gun.

Good luck with you project.


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Oldtimehtr said:


> Interesting topic even if it is "off-topic." Brought back some fond memories from sixty-odd years ago when I was a wee tyke. Hog slaughterin' was a common family event. I remember a time when my Grandpa had slaughtered a pig and left the head out on the ground. I was the proud owner of a genuine Red Rider BB gun and I couldn't reisit a shot at that pig head. Got 'im right between the eyes.... and the BB came back and got me right between the eyes. Thought I had been hit with a .06. Tough go to explain to my Mom how I got the big red knot between my eyes. Lesson learned: never shoot a pig head with a BB gun.
> 
> Good luck with you project.


Now that's a great story, and unfortunately one that fewer and fewer kids will get to experience. We were thinking when we were processing the pigs in my garage that 30 years ago your neighbors would probably come over to help if they saw you doing something like that, while today they would likely as not call the cops.


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## Critter (Mar 20, 2010)

Pumpgunner said:


> Oldtimehtr said:
> 
> 
> > Interesting topic even if it is "off-topic." Brought back some fond memories from sixty-odd years ago when I was a wee tyke. Hog slaughterin' was a common family event. I remember a time when my Grandpa had slaughtered a pig and left the head out on the ground. I was the proud owner of a genuine Red Rider BB gun and I couldn't reisit a shot at that pig head. Got 'im right between the eyes.... and the BB came back and got me right between the eyes. Thought I had been hit with a .06. Tough go to explain to my Mom how I got the big red knot between my eyes. Lesson learned: never shoot a pig head with a BB gun.
> ...


Don't you know that pork comes from the super market all wrapped up in plastic on a nice white tray? And don't forget that with that BB gun you are going to shoot your eye out :mrgreen: Or as my mom used to say to me when you shoot your eye out don't come running to me.

I agree that most people would just look at you and sneer if they saw you butchering a pig in your garage. I know that one of my neighbors years ago wondered what I was doing when I had a whole elk hanging in mine before I cut and wrapped it.


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## StillAboveGround (Aug 20, 2011)

Pumpgunner said:


> A long day cutting meat but it was all worth it, thanks again everybody for the advice! Now I've got to go start mixing up a rub for the bacon......


Good Job!
I'd like to know how the bacon turns out...
I have never DIY'd bacon before...
Something most of our non-city folk grandparents did.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Do you have bacon hooks? or are you going to make your own?

I have some you can borrow.

good luck


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## Moostickles (Mar 11, 2010)

Cooky said:


> See if you can find a book called Small Scale Pig Raising by Dirk van Loon. It has a good section on slaughtering and butchering, very in depth. I imagine it's out of print, my copy is from 1978. I use the feed formulas.


http://www.amazon.com/Small-Scale-Pig-R ... 516&sr=8-1


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Wyo-I made my own racks for smoking the bacon, seemed to work pretty well but thanks very much for the offer. My first batch of bacon was pretty good, salted and cured for 5 days and smoked for 4 hours over apple wood-tastes great but I think next time I will try salting for only 3 days as this batch turned out a bit salty for my tastes. Also I have been making sausage like crazy-so far I've made Italian, Apple/apricot breakfast sausage, and savory breakfast sausage with herbs and brown sugar. They've all been really good but it's tricky to get the hang of stuffing the sausage casings, guess I will have to practice more!


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

4 or 5 day cure should be right for a wet cure. What's the temperature? Are you rinsing your sides in cold water after the cure?

I use a wet cure. Mix it up until an egg floats to the top. That's just salty enough. Brine the sides for 5 days ar 5 weeks, doesn't make any difference, the bacon won't get any saltier. Or I can use a salinometer if I want to get fancy. 

What type of casings are you using? I like sheep, but on the farm we usually used hog casings out of the hogs we were butchering. Stuff the sheep casings loosely and then twist into links and let dry (and shrink) for an hour at room temp. I stuff hog casings pretty tight and pr**ck them so they won't burst when cooking and to get any big air pockets out.

Mrs Goob and I stuff sausages for over 30 years. She would crank and I would feed the product into the casings, from tiny 18mm lamb casings to big 120mm synthetic bologna casings. She could never get the hang of filling a casing as tight as can be and still not break it. She can't do it anymore. I now have an electric 20-pounder with a foot switch and stuff most of my sausages myself. 

2 things: Get all of the air out of the stuffer and keep the meat frosty. 

Did you buy sausage spice mixes or make your own? The apple/apricot sounds cool.


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## Cooky (Apr 25, 2011)

Pumpgunner said:


> I have been making sausage like crazy-so far I've made Italian, Apple/apricot breakfast sausage, and savory breakfast sausage with herbs and brown sugar.


Please share some details about that sausage. Those flavors sound good. When I read your post I had to go start a batch of sour dough for pancakes in morning, I wish I had some apple and apricot sausage.


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## Pumpgunner (Jan 12, 2010)

Wyo-thanks again for your advice, you're a fountain of information about this stuff! I dry-cured my first batch of bacon and rinsed them off before I smoked it, but maybe I didn't rinse enough. I will try your wet cure for the next batch. I have been using hog casings for my sausage, filling and linking them hasn't been that hard but there is definitely a technique to it! We had some italian sausage in marinara last night and it was awesome....

Cooky-my recipe for the apple/apricot sausage is to use about 2 pounds of ground pork at about a 25% fat content. Add 2 teaspoons salt, a bit of pepper, a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg, about 1 1/2 Tablespoons of brown sugar, and then about a third of a cup each of apple butter and apricot butter. You can also use dried bits of apple and apricot if you want. Mix everything together really well and stuff into casings or make patties. Sorry if the recipe isn't that precise but I worked as a chef for 10 years and I do a lot of my measuring by feel. For the Italian I used salt, pepper, sage, fennnel, cayenne, garlic, and red chili flakes for seasoning. The fun thing about sausage is that there is literally no limit to the ways to flavor it! When I lived in New Zealand they had really good sausages like lamb & mint, sundried tomato, curry, and lots of other varieties that I want to try to make!


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