How Much Meat From A Pig
| January 31, 2011 | Posted by Issa under Animals |
Last year I raised two pigs. This year other people I know are interested in having a freezer full of pork, too, and I’m raising a total of 5-6 pigs. I can’t legally sell the meat, but I can raise the pigs and then my friends pay for the meat at the processor’s. I’m so excited about having pigs around The Wallow again! I’ve been busily putting together all the information that everyone needs to make a decision about having me raise a pig for them.
One of the questions that I want to answer is how much meat you actually get from a pig and what cuts make up that meat. I’ve looked at lots of different sites to get a good idea of the answer, so I’m putting all that information together here.
The Terms
There are several different terms you’ll run across when talking about how much pig there is.
First, there’s the live weight, which, like it sounds, is how much the pig weighs when it’s alive. Since I don’t have a scale, when I judge the live weight, it’s based on a tape measure and a mathematical formula, which gets me in the neighborhood but isn’t exact. This is also sometimes referred to as “on the hoof”.
Another term is market weight. Market weight is a target weight for when the pigs go to the processor. Market weight for pigs is in the 225-300 pound range. Any more or less than that and the ratio of how much meat you get versus how much money you put in isn’t as ideal. I’m aiming for 300 pound pigs this year.
The hanging weight is the weight of the carcass after slaughter but before butchering. The blood has been drained, the intestines removed, and parts like the head and feet cut off. This is the weight that the processor charges by, and the weight that I’m using for charging people this year. Other words used to describe the hanging weight are dressed weight and “on the rail”.
Cuts are the products you get from the pig. This includes meat cuts, like sausage and pork chops, plus bones and fat. Since it’s not all meat that you take home to your freezer, it’s more accurate to say cuts than to say meat when talking about what you get from a pig.
The Math
I’m aiming for 300 pound pigs, but the price to the customer is based on the hanging weight, so some math gets involved in predicting how much people will owe. Then there’s the weight of what goes into your freezer, which is another number. It’s also important to keep in mind that all these numbers are just estimates. Different breeds of pigs turn out different numbers, each particular pig is different, and the style of the processor also matters in the final number.
It’s common for sites to give the hanging weight as a percentage of live weight and then the cuts as a percentage of hanging weight. If you’re trying to figure out how much you’re going to have in your freezer based on my estimate of 300 pound pigs, this can get confusing.
Amongst the sites I’ve looked at, hanging weight is given as anywhere from 64-85% of live weight and cuts given as 68-90% of hanging weight. That’s a lot of numbers and quite a range. For my goal of 300 pound pigs, these numbers give a hanging weight of 192-255 and the cuts weighing in at 130-230. This would make the cuts 43-76% of the live weight. But 76% is way too high there. Most sites quote cuts as 48-65% of live weight. Besides, I’d like to give my customers a bit more certainty on what they’re getting for their 300 pound pig.
Instead of looking all over and combining everyone’s numbers, I’ll go straight to my two favorite authorities on this topic on the web. One is the The Meatman. I recommend checking out his site since it’s just a lot of fun to browse around. The Meatman has processed a lot of meat, and he gives an average of 104 pounds of cuts from a 215 pound live weight pig, which makes the cuts about 48% of live weight. Then I head over to Sugar Mountain Farm to hear from Walter Jefferies. Between the Sugar Mountain Farm site and Walter’s contributions on a pig-related email list I’m on, Walter is my online pig guru. Walter says hanging weight is about 72% of live weight and the commercial cuts 66% of hanging weight or 48% of live weight. Since Walter and The Meatman agree, that’s definitely the number I’m going with!
So, from my 300 pound pig, I can expect about 216 hanging weight and about 144 pounds in the freezer.
The Cuts
The next question everyone wants to know is exactly what they’ll end up with in their freezer. Again, this is inexact, since breed, individual pig, and processing choices will affect the end result.
Here are some examples I found of what you might get from a whole pig:
- 18 lbs pork chops, 4 lbs spare ribs, 12 lbs sausage, 24 lbs ham, 20 lbs bacon, 12 lbs shoulder butt roasts, 14 lbs shoulder picnic, 16 lbs bone/trimmings, 30 lbs fat = 150 lbs
- 7 lbs pork chops, 8 lbs sausage, 24 lbs ham, 20 lbs bacon, 17 lbs pork roast, 16 lbs picnic and shoulder butts, 7 lbs misc cuts, 5 lbs salt pork, 31 lbs fat = 135 lbs
- 23 lbs pork chops, 6 lbs spare ribs, 18 lbs ground sausage, 30 lbs ham, 16 lbs bacon, 20 lbs shoulder roast, 8 lbs butt roast, 10 lbs stew bones, 16 lbs fat = 147 lbs
- 23 lbs pork chops, 6 lbs spare ribs, 9 lbs sausage, 28 lbs ham, 23 lbs bacon, 9 lbs boston butt, 12 lbs picnic roast, 23 lbs fat = 133 lbs
I’m sorry to say I didn’t record the cuts we got from our pigs last year. I know we got a lot more sausage than these examples give, and we got more ham. We did not get nearly that much fat, and we got less bacon. I can never keep the shoulder/butt/picnic roasts straight, so I’m not sure what we got of those or in what kinds of amounts. I’ll try to record what I get this year so I have a better idea of what comes out of our particular pigs and our particular processor.
Space Needs
The final thing I want to cover here is how much space you need in order to have a whole pig on hand.
The first consideration is the coolers needed to pick your cuts up from the processor. Walter provides this photo of a half-pig share:
A full pig would need twice as much space, of course
The second consideration is your freezer space at home. You need a chest freezer if you’re getting a whole pig. If you only got a half pig, you might be able to fit it into your regular freezer, but not much else would fit in there.
The Meatman estimates that you need one cubic foot of freezer space for 30 pounds of pig. That means I expect people who have me raise their pig this year will need about 5 cubic feet of cooler space and freezer space.
In the end, all numbers aside, you get a lot out of a pig, and it’s all really yummy! It’s hard to go wrong, and I’m really excited to get started this year.!
Tags: Pigs
Facebook
GooglePlus
Twitter
StumbleUpon
RSS
I am so glad that I found this on the web. I am going to be butcher out a pig in the next two to three months and I was looking to see about how much meat I would be getting. Right now my pig is at a friends since I don’t have a place for it at my place. At this time all I know is it was born in Jan so it is around 9 month old now.
I’m so glad you found this post useful. We just picked up our meat from this year’s pigs, and I’ll be making a follow up post of exactly what cuts in what amounts we got. Keep in mind that if you do like we did and get things like the feet, hocks, head, etc, you end up with a bit more, but otherwise, my numbers in this post came out just right for what we got this year.
How big is your pig at 9 months? Last year we processed our pigs at 5-6 months old and 250 pounds. This year we processed at 7-8 months old and about 300 pounds.
I had the same thought. If the pig’s not at market weight by 9 months, I wonder what is holding it back?
I have no idea how much he weighs. One of the reason he has not gone to the butcher is we had to get a freezer to put him in and that is on its way. We should be taking him next month. I also think he is not getting the feed he needs for he is in a pet with like 7 other and 8 newer babies. The next pig that I have I will have at my place.
Ah, well that makes more sense. At 9 months, he should be a real honker! You’ll get more than your share of meat off him.
You may not know that there is a method for estimating a pig’s weight by length and girth measurements. You can read about it here:
http://flashweb.com/blog/2006/01/how-to-weigh-a-pig-with-a-string.html
Thank you for the information! We are in the procecssing of raising our first two pigs (Berkies). They were born in late April. Just wondering if there is a way of guessing the weight by height?
Thanks, Karen
To “weigh” a big pig, you measure their length from the top of the tail to in between the ears and then measure the heart girth which is the length around the body just behind the front legs. Then calculate (in inches) length times girth times girth divided by 400. If you’re doing centimeters, you divide by 13781. I use a tailor’s tape to do this measuring. You could also use a sting or twine, tie knots at the measurement spots and then use a tape measure/ruler/yardstick to measure between your knots. If you’re going to do regular measuring (I do weekly), I highly recommend picking up a tailor’s tape. Much easier! Keep in mind that this is an estimate and will vary somewhat from a true weighing, depending on the physiology of your pigs and the accuracy of your measuring. For us, when we compare our measurements to the final weights at the processor, our calculations run about 20 pounds lighter than the true weight. But that’s pretty close on a 200-300 pound pig!
Congrats on raising your first pigs! This was year two for me, and I’m completely in love. My motivation for talking my friends into buying pigs from me this year was just so I could get to raise more pigs! :-)
Thanks so much for your time! Much appreciated. I have a tailors tape, and I’m off to the barnyard! I can’t wait to try this meat I have so lovingly prepared all summer !!
These measurement calculations always crack me up. While they may be more or less accurate, I’ve never had an animal that would hold still long enough to be measured.
I’ve found that they hold still just fine with a food bowl in front of them. They may be a bit skittish at first and scoot to the other side of the bowl, but I stay patient and keep leaning over with the tape, and I get a good reading in a try or two.
Ok so we have the chance to buy to hogs. Live weights are 678lb and 946lbs off these guys. Only reason he is sellin them is they are gettin to big for his sows to be bred. About how much meat am I actually looking at for each? I only got a 5 cubic ft chest freezer……
Using my calculations, the amount of cuts total from those two pigs would be about 780 pounds which would require 26 cubic feet of freezer space. If you are only interested in the meat, that will come down some. Pigs that size will have a lot of fat, for instance. Pigs are normally slaughtered at 225-300 to maximize the amount of meat to fat.
A couple of other things to consider, if you haven’t already: don’t forget to factor in the cost of the butcher. At my processor, the cost to process those two together would be about $528 on top of whatever you pay the guy for the pigs. Also, these pigs are uncastrated males, which means you should read up on boar taint so you can make an informed decision about buying them for meat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_taint
I found this site while searching to find out why pigs/hogs have so much fat. My daughter and her hubby are cutting up a wild pig and the question came up. Any idea why?
No, I don’t know. I mean, it’s easy for pigs to get fat on commercial feed, and I assume a wild pig could find a particularly rich diet and be fatter than usual. But, I think what you’re asking is why do pigs in general have a higher body fat than, say, cows. I don’t know the answer to why some animals have a larger fat percentage than others.
Do we, in fact, know that pigs have a higher fat content than cows? Beef tallow used to be (maybe still is?) a major industrial product–used for candles, among other things. I don’t know if cows are fattier, per-pound, than pigs, but they certainly produce a lot of fat on an absolute scale!
http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/showthread.php?t=32046
The above thread references a body fat percentage of 27% for grain-finished cattle and 19% for hay-finished cattle.
http://jas.fass.org/content/74/11/2663.full.pdf
Meanwhile, the above-linked PDF found a sampling of pigs to have a body fat percentage between 9 and 24%, with an average of about 18%.
Obviously, the actual fat amount will depend on many factors, most significantly the type and amount of feed given to the animal, but also the breed. That being said, it sounds like pigs and cows have roughly similar body fat percentages–at least under some conditions.
Maybe pigs just carry their weight differently than cows? Or maybe it’s that lard is a more popular fat than beef tallow, and so we think of pigs as being fattier. If you are cutting up a wild pig, then I would expect that it would be much less fatty than a domesticated pig. I wonder what you’re using as a comparison? If you’re comparing a wild hog to, for example, deer, then the fact that the deer is a vegetarian and the hog is not may factor into it. Or maybe hogs just have slower metabolisms and hold fat better.
Great information. Thank you.
hi, well i have a question that im sure some people are wondering… how much is the cuts worth? compared to the total amount invested in raising these pigs. if you buy 2 pigs at 60 lbs for 120$ and then feed them until weight 250lbs at about 60$per week and then pay for slaughter which is around 350$ for the two..1400$ is my closest estimate.. is that comparable to the value of the meat? if anyone knows please let me know… thank you
I pay $50-$60 per weaner pig, and then they eat about $140 in feed per pig. (Not sure where you got $60/wk…?) My slaughter fee is $30 per pig. The butcher fee is $0.40/lb hanging weight, which would be around $72 on a 250lb pig. That makes my cost for raising one pig to be around $300.
Using your 250lb pig example, that makes the approximately 165 cuts about $1.81/lb. When I sell pigs to my friends, I build in extra money to cover my fencing/shelter/misc costs, and their cuts end up at around $3.50/lb. When I see similarly raising pigs in my area being sold by other people, it comes out to more like $6.50/lb.
To determine the commercial value of the meat if you just bought from the store, you’d have to do some figuring based on the prices of different cuts (ribs, roasts, bacon, etc). Obviously my $1.81/lb for my own meat is a great deal, and the $3.50/lb for my friends is a pretty good deal, too, especially when you add in the value of non-industrial production.
Does that answer your question?
I’m wondering if this “Pig Co-Ownership” has an official name? Three friends and I want to co-buy a lamb. But we don’t know where to start. We live in California so not too many farm options here. Any thoughts?
I’ve seen it referred to as “shares”. As in, “We’re going to buy a pig share or a half share of cow. http://www.localharvest.org/ is probably a good place to start looking for places near you.
[...] website > Click Not exactly what your looking but may help put it into perspective. It really would depend on [...]