Homesteading: The rewards of hard work. Our pig meat.

How much does it cost to get them butchered? How much does it cost to raise them? I would be interested to know how much you've saved.

I bet like any animal, it costs a lot to keep them and raise them. That is a lot of meat though.

If you are buying in feed it will add up quickly enough, however pigs are rather noted omnivores and between some stuff you might grow and the scraps from your kitchen (and some local kitchens) it can drop prices there dramatically (as well as reducing waste from your kitchen). Don't know what vet bills are like around DeadlyFoez and keeping things fit for human consumption would be something else I don't know how to account for around that area (it changes the nature of what they can do it is going to enter the food chain), however such things don't tend to need as much looking after as your typical dog or cat.

https://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/livestock/pigs/pig-costs/ for an older UK version. Price wise pork in a UK supermarket is about £5 a kilo (mince is a bit less, as are some lesser cuts, some cuts are a bit more, some are quite a bit more than that and you would have them all from this). From the link the yield of a 100KG better part of a year old pig is about 64KG so about £325, somewhat more than the costs in the link.

i would like try to butcher it myself, where is my clever?? wait I can't find it...

The cost of butchering was a little over $500. To feed them was between $15 and $80 a week. It was only so much because we didn't want to only feed them the general pig feed from the store, but we also wanted to feed them fresh greens, fruits, and veggies. If we stay with just only the animal feed from the store then it would have been about $5 a week at the start and about $20 a week at the end. Next time it will be a lot cheaper because we will have a big ass garden next year so the cost will be next to nothing to feed them. As far as the other stuff, we got a lot of things for free off of craigslist and whatever spare lumber we had around. I didn't have to buy very much to accommodate for them. There shelter is an IBC tank that I made into a pig hut, and that I got for free on craigslist. To make the pen I just used a bunch of pallets for fencing and those were all free from a place up the road from us.

Also, next year I will buy a band saw and then I will do the slaughtering and butchering myself. So the only real cost next year will be just purchasing the pigs which they go for about $100 each. In a few years we will begin breeding pigs so then the cost will be next to nothing for us which is the ultimate goal of homesteading.

man, i lived in a rural village during childhood, and i saw my neighbours butchered their pigs, it not that easy as you think:
the modern butcherhouse uses electroshock to stunned them 1st then tie them and put them on bench mechanical saw.

at home lack of those ''tools'', pigs when awared you are going to kill them will become very aggressive and they bite hard yep, you have murder them to death as quick as possible and u need a buddy 's help to immobilize them

When i was i kid, my neighbours just butcher them on street and we kids see them as entertain show lol the one much more bloodier than wthose funny ''horror'' film make by computer... the easiest way is 2 people tier them and immobilize them and let butcher to cut pigs throat and wait them to bleed out and the pig screamed so much....

i still remember it as it was happened yesterday.... pretty sure it was the longest moment in their entire life, and the pig also cries a lot.

You can just have them killed and drained for a token sum before being given back to you to butcher. Depending upon where you live you might be required to kill it humanely.

I don't know that I would want to do a whole pig at home though if it was not going to be a thing that I do fairly often and thus warrant gearing up for. Lambs, birds, obviously fish and maybe some deer not a problem (few do goat around here any more but I would do that as well). Decent table, proper knife and suitable bandsaw if I am being lazy. A full pig... might be more than is fun.

On the other hand a video I have linked in the past

That looks like a skill worth having.