How to Butcher a Pig

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Figure 1: The weight of different cuts of pork from a 225 pound and 250 pound pig. PHOTOS: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF

Click on the Image Gallery for step-by-step photographs. 

Planning for Butchering

Beginning with the warm carcass of a freshly butchered hog or other meat animal, up to the time you are ready to cook the meat weeks or months later, you are dealing with a valuable and perishable food product.

Strict attention to correct methods, cleanliness in handling the meat, the proper tools and equipment are all very important. Indifferent methods, or lack of proper attention to important details never helps you to turn out high quality, cured meats that keep well.

A shed or building properly equipped for the job, a small pen along side for penning up hogs before they are butchered, a handy water heating arrangement with scalding vat, a heavy table, a convenient means of swinging the carcass with a block and tackle, heavy single trees and gambrel sticks, and a good set of butchering tools make up the initial equipment that will help you do the job easily, quickly, and efficiently.

A good set of butchering tools should consist of a sticking knife, skinning knife, boning knife, butcher knife, steel, cleaver, bell scrapers, meat saw, and meat hooks. Additional instruments that are very useful are a meat pump, thermometer and meat needle, for sewing rolled cuts.

Butchering

Pork is our most nutritious meat andproduces a higher percent of edible meat products than any other meat animal.  

There is no section of the country where hogs cannot be profitably grown for the home meat supply. Hogs reproduce faster and in greater numbers than any other meat animals and most efficiently convert grain and other feeds into edible meat products.

The table in figure 1 shows the weight of the different cuts from a 225 lb. and 250 lb. hog. It also shows what percent of the carcass the different cuts represent.

Selection of Hogs for Butchering

High quality meat with a sweet, rich, full-bodied flavor is always worth a premium, and hogs that produce this kind of meat should be the only ones butchered and cured for home use.

Good meat, of course, depends upon many factors, and one important factor is the kind of hogs butchered. Thrifty, properly fattened hogs, weighing from 180 to 250 lbs. and from eight to ten months old are the best ones for home butchering. Hogs of this size are more easily handled and the meat chills out more quickly. They produce medium weight cuts which are more suitable for the average family, and medium weight cuts will cure quicker and more uniformly than heavier cuts. Medium weight hams, shoulders, and bacon are finer in texture and flavor and are of better quality than those from older, heavier hogs. Non-thrifty shoats, or heavy 400 to 600 lb. hogs do not produce the best type of meat for home curing. Also, it costs more to produce each pound of meat in heavier hogs than in lighter ones.