All of your pig talk got me in TROUBLE!

[Bruce]

Landrace are known as bacon hogs.

YUM!

 

[Baymule]

We hung our hogs from the tractor front end bucket. Handy. You said you don't have any equipment......oh, but you do.. You have a car or truck. Do you have a tree branch to toss a rope over? Hoist up the pig with the car or truck bumper. If not a tree branch, do you have a swing set or A frame for pulling motors? Get creative!

 

[misfitmorgan]

Your definitely correct about pigs being athletic and active. I believe most of us still picture pigs as those ones we saw in cartoons, where they lazily just sleep in the mud all day and dont do much moving or the alternative which is feeder floor/confinement where there is no room to play/romp.

Everyone i know who sees our pigs out in pasture is shocked at them running and playing, i was too at first. If your not after lard i think you will like your pigs a lot when it comes to eating time. Keep in mind pigs weigh more then they look generally and dead weight is dead weight. I am on board with @Baymule i think your going to need to hang those hogs up from something. We do have a gambrel and a hoist we use but sometimes like this past weekend we butcher more then once pig at a time. So pig 1 as hung on the gambrel so DH could work on butchering it and pig 2 was hung from the rafters of our workshop with baling twine looped around the "ankles".

 

[Matt n Lee]

We hung our hogs from the tractor front end bucket. Handy. You said you don't have any equipment......oh, but you do.. You have a car or truck. Do you have a tree branch to toss a rope over? Hoist up the pig with the car or truck bumper. If not a tree branch, do you have a swing set or A frame for pulling motors? Get creative!

When I said we dont have heavy equipment I meant we dont have a tractor. So the plan is basically after dispatching of the pig to place him on a pallet and for 4 of us (DH,DW, twin 16 year old sons) to grab a corner and move him to our covered porch. once on the covered porch we will use a block and tackle or possibly a come-a-long to hoist the hog and go to work. I plan this for feb so that after scraping and eviscerating we can let the carcass hang for a few days outside while its cold and no flies. Then come back and start butchering. In the past I have done sheep this way, but they are not heavy and we basically just lifted them and didnt need a come-a-long.

There will be plenty of video on this process that I will definitely post here

 

[Baymule]

While he is hanging you might want to drape a sheet over him. I have never hung meat before, in Southern meat processing, meat is "aged" in an ice chest. LOL LOL I will be especially interested in the scraping process.

 

[misfitmorgan]

That is one nice thing about the north, we can age meat for 30 days by just leaving it hanging outside....no outside bugs here from about mid-december until the end of march sometimes april.

@Baymule DH wants to scald and scrape Eva when we butcher her....he wants to do it this weekend....i told him he is nuts...i'm hoping to wait until next weekend when it isnt negative something.

 

[Baymule]

Hanging meat outside where you live isn't aging it, that's freezing it.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Hanging meat outside where you live isn't aging it, that's freezing it.

You may have a point...it comes in handy though.

 

[Matt n Lee]

Well this isnt a pig video, but all my BYH BFFs are in this thread so I am posting here

 

[Matt n Lee]

Ok pig people we need your help. Does this look like a hernia to you? Is there anything we should do about it?

Should I start a new thread to get more eyes on this?