Every single muscle in my arms is sore. There are muscles in my body that I didn’t even know existed until the day after slaughtering my two hogs. Unfortunately, I woke up the day after feeling extremely sore and realizing that I was only half way done with this endeavor. The 2nd day was 12 hours long and required me to break down each half into cuts of meat. Monday, I took the morning off from work so I could wrap up tasks like cleaning my house, curing bacon and hams and finalizing a final quarter of one of the hogs.
It was in May that I picked up two piglets for $100 a piece and brought them home to a 20×20 pen that I built myself. For 6 months, I had to feed them once per day, water them twice per day. While traveling, some neighbors were great at lending a hand and those neighbors will be getting some meat from me now that everything is done. These hogs had big personalities. The male and the female were so different. The female would curiously stare at you and try to figure you out. The boy loved his back scratches. He’d grunt and his leg would move like a dog when you scratched behind his ears. The pigs were very smart. If I had food, I’d walk up and make pig sounds. they knew it was me and would buck and kick and run in circles oinking and demanding food. It was our only real way of communicating. I did this oink thing intentionally so, if they ever escaped, I could oink and they’d run to me.
The pigs escaped twice and this oink maneuver led them right back into the pen because they were sure of food being their upon their return. They escaped using smart tactics. The female knew how to unlock the gate. She’d unlock it with her snout and they’d mud around in my river. I had to adjust the pen to compensate for this and the issue went away.
I really did enjoy the company of these pigs. They were adorable, cute, fun, smart and had great personalities. Pigs are interesting because their anatomy is so close to humans. Also, they’re very smart and can be trained to do tricks and be house broken. Also, they yield the most meat per pound of feed of any other animal. Unfortunately, they also get fatter and fatter and are never full so most pig owners that have them as pets have a big problem with diet control. Additionally, being outside animals, these pigs were going to have some serious issues should I have kept them throughout the winter. Overall, pigs are born to do one thing for humans. Enjoy 6-9 months of life and then be slaughtered for meat. We slaughter millions of pigs a year in America. All commercial operations treat their pigs poorly and slaughter them in the most inhumane ways. My pigs had a good life. They received a lot of back scratches.
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Preparation:
I spent the last 3 months studying intensely all that would be required of me on slaughter day. I acquired all of the necessary tools and planned as much as possible. I visualized the gun shot and the neck slice. I imagined how to skin the pig using diagrams I had researched and made preparations for hanging the pigs and processing. The planning took over 10 times the amount of time versus the actual slaughter. The key preparation was comprised of skills and tools.
- Books & Videos explaining every aspect of slaughtering and processing a hog. I studied these religiously.
- Knives:
- Boning
- Meat Clever
- Bone Saw
- Double Sided Sticking Knife
- Upside down game hanging apparatus that hooks into the tendons of the animal’s feet
- Hot water
- Cold clean water
- Towels
- Bell Scraper (to remove hair from the skin)
- Tarps
- Meat hooks
- Large cutting board
- Sanitizer
- Gloves
- Gun
- Vacuum sealing system with freezer bags and markers.
- Sausage Casings
- Sausage maker / meat grinder
These are the primary tools that I used in the project. Many items I didn’t have so I had to purchase these.
Summary of the Slaughter:
The slaughter went exceptionally well. I had a lot of doubts going into this. My fear was that I would get the kill completely wrong and be stuck with bloody, rancid and stiff meat.
IT WENT PERFECT!
We lured one of the hogs out of the pen and enticed it with food after it hadn’t eaten for 24 hours. The initial plan was a 22 caliber rifle to the head between the eyes to stun it followed by sticking it to let the body bleed out. Sticking is VERY important. Too deep and you hit the heart, too shallow and you miss both arteries. You want a “good bleed” because it influences the quality of your meat. You also don’t want to mess up any cuts of meat by sticking incorrectly. The heart must remain intact so it keeps pumping blood. The sticking is the most important and timely action you must make when slaughtering a hog. I heard last minute that a 22 to the forehead sometimes doesn’t work. So, I reverted to a backup plan which is my 45 Ruger pistol right behind the ear. This would essentially render the brain of the hog useless. I then had to hold it down and still get a perfect sticking.
I hit both arteries on both pigs, the bleed out was perfect and the hogs were each lifeless within 60 seconds.
This was the most critical part of the slaughter and I nailed it. I’m stoked and my friend was surprised at how fast I did the sticking. A lot of first time hog owners shoot their hog and it’s so emotional, they can’t just run in and do the deed.
It’s scary also to know that I’m not hungry or starving or in need of this food right now and have this profound relationship with my hogs who I’ve raised for months and yet I’m still able to clearly and composed walk to them, shoot them and then stick a gaping hole in their neck. I’m proud of myself but also alarmed at how easy the action was to perform. It’s over now. I did what was planned and the hogs died faster because of my composure. This is important.
Overall view of the standard first steps of processing:
Hanging the hog outside, cleaning, skinning and remove the visceral and finally cutting each hog in half took a considerable amount of time. I had some help but all of us were inexperienced. The majority of my help was simply due to the need for some heavy lifting to get the hogs hanging.
I felt as if this process went pretty well. The one issue we encountered on the first hog that wasn’t an issue on the second was the removal of the bung, genitalia and then allowing this removal not to rupture the intestines (which will taint the meat) and allow the insides to fall down with gravity. Failure to remove the outer connection efficiently doesn’t allow for an easy extraction of visceral. This took a while to figure out the connections. On the 2nd hog, this process was quick and took nearly no time at all.
The other complication was ensuring that, while removing the skin, we were also keeping as much fat on the caracas as possible. The result is that some cuts of meat aren’t as fatty as possible and I had to abandon the hope of saving fat back for cooking and baking. There’s plenty of lard options available as it’s a very cheap commodity but I wanted to extract this myself as a part of using every bit of the pig possible.
Processing the raw meat after hanging it and dividing each cut into vacuum sealed freezer bags:
I expected this step to be far easier than it was. I had reviewed the how-to many times. The first pig half took about 3 hours to divide into cuts. The final half took 45 minutes. The cuts aren’t the issue. Actually quartering a hog is easy. Pork chops are impossibly hard. You let the ribs decide how thick the pork chops are but then you’re sawing through spine to make it work out and then cleaving off the vertebrae from the pork chop. Separating ribs from pork belly was difficult and the leg bones were very difficult. I only cut myself once and it wasn’t even a mis-cut. I just tapped my blade on my finger. It was so sharp, it starting bleeding like crazy. Tearing down a pig was a very manual process.
Each cut of meat was individually bagged in vacuum sealed freezer bags. Then they were labeled.
I placed the pork bellies and hams in a Brine or a Cure and they will need a week or so before I’m ready to smoke them on apple wood.
Overall, this process was very time consuming and very tiring.
My overall thoughts on the entire event:
As was said earlier, I ended this finally on Monday morning with a tired body and very tired mind. Despite months of preparation and research, it was still an affair that challenged me greatly. The good news is that I now have a freezer full of quality home-grown meats to share with friends. The cost ended up being the same as buying everything pre-cut and packaged from a grocery store. That wasn’t the point. I didn’t aim to save money on my first go. there are ways to save money going forward but this exercise was in doing it all myself and seeing how much I could accomplish with two hands on my own land.
I don’t know yet if I’ll have pigs next year. We’ll see. I do know that the slaughter was rewarding, fun and tiresome. I didn’t think it would go so well and it did. Very exciting and I’m one-step closer to some bigger goals of being completely self-sufficient and living off the land.
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There are photos of the event. I’m putting them below. You have to click through to see them.
