Pigators!

I was doing my weekly round around the pasture, and i noticed something odd. I couldn't really see what it was, but it was alive.

The pigs have dug out their own private lagoon, and they're floating around in it like alligators.

I'm guessing this started as a wallow, and they dug down to the water table, and then dug a connection to the local drainage ditch. The result is that they've got a mudhole. But then I noticed something funny. They're not moving. These pigs are stuck.

They can move around in the water and mud, but the sides of the pit they've dug are too steep and slippery for them to climb out of. Now I'm counting. there are 12 pigs stuck in this hole, with an average weight of around 300lbs.

Even my big boar is stuck in the hole. He weighs in at around 600lbs. So I'm looking at half my pig herd stuck in this hole. Best I can figure is that the first few were drinking there, and then it got steep and slippery, and now and then another pig would fall in. there's brush and mud and stuff for them to eat, and they're all in good condition -- lots of body fat. Hmm.. wonder how long they've been in there?

Celebrating the baptism of Rafael, Jr.

As I've farmed and sold food to people, I've become part of their social and religious customs, and it's been interesting to look into their culture through supplying the main course in many occasions.

Juan called me and asked if I had a pig of a particular size, and after a few minutes, I said I did, but that I'd like him to come down and look at it to make sure that it was what he wanted. So we walked around the pasture and looked at various pigs, and finally settled on a black gilt. This particular gilt (gilt is a virgin female pig) wasn't putting on weight like her brothers and sisters, and had a pronounced limp on a rear foot. She's been limping for a month or so, getting around and eating, but it was interfering with her grow out, and she only had 12 nipples, so her lowline (belly) wasn't what I needed to breed. I want 14 or 16 nipples. Not every pig is worth breeding. So it was time for her to go.

At first I thought it was Juan buying the pig, but Juan was really helping his friend Rafael and Rafael's brother Marco with what is probably their first whole-pig purchase. Rafael's' son, Rafael Jr, was being baptised, and there was a party hosting 200 people planned for this event.

The following is a step-by-step pictorial of how to break down a whole pig. Slaughtering and scraping a pig is a 5 or 6 man-hour process, so having multiple people makes the work go faster.

Just a note: My farm is right next to an elevated freeway, and at some point during this process there was an accident on the freeway above, and this slowed traffic down to the point that the folks driving by got a good eyeful. I don't think the slaughtering caused the accident, but it did happen at the tree you can see above the fellow in the purple shirt.
This picture shows the bullet hole used to stun the pig. I draw a line from each ear to the eye on the opposite side, and put the shot where the two lines form an X. I use a .22 calibre hollow point bullet, and I angle the shot so that the bullet ends up in the chest cavity for safety reasons. You always want to be aware of the background of your shot. In this case to stun the pig I had to circle and work with the pig a little to get a direction to shoot that had nothing in the background.

After the stun & stick, I used the tractor to bring the pig over to the processing area. That's a little bit more glorified -- it's a pile of woodchips that I am composting. the wood chips absorb the blood and hair. After this pig is gone I'll spread another 6" on top of it, and turn it, and it'll be rich black soil.

Boiling water is poured on the pig. After each pour he'll test it by pulling on the hair. If it comes out easily, it's ready, and the knife is used like a squeegee to scrape the hair off.

Black, brown, white, spotted, it doesn't matter what color it is when you start. At the end of this process all pigs are white.

The head and ears are particularly hard to scrape. Some folks bring a weed burner; Juan and Rafael and Marcos choose to scrape it themselves. Note the wound on the neck; that's where the pig was stuck to bleed it after the shot.

I asked them what they did about the ears to eat them. They deep fry them, for 20 or so minutes until soft and tender, and then chop them and serve them as an appetizer with lime and salsa and pepper.

The feet are hard to scrape, too. Here Juan is using a bucket to dip each foot into. Later he'll cut the feet off and put the whole trotter into boiling water to get the toenails off, too.

Here's the finished produce. They carefully clean the hair off the pallets and prop the body up on two blocks of wood.

This is the first cut for skinning the pig. One cut across the neck, and one down the center of the pig. There will be a second cut from the center of the pig to the inside of each leg.

Slowly, careful not to puncture the abdominal cavity, they skin the pig. Juan, on the right, is skinning. Marcos, on the left, is also skinning. this goes pretty quickly. they are skinning with straight knives -- a skinning knife would have made this easier for them.

Here the skin is off most of the pig, attached at the backbone. They're working the skin off the hams.

Rolling the pig to one side, they skin past the backbone on one side....

...and then roll the pig over to the other to completely separate the pig from its skin.

the front shoulders are taken off at this point. the shoulder at far left is already off. He's working on the other shoulder know. At the right, Juan is cutting the hams a little. This is preparatory to spreading the pelvis.

The rib cage was opened, and the belly to the pelvis. They use all hands to force the ribs apart to get working room.

at this point they mostly cut the head free. It's still attached by the skin on the back of the pigs neck, but the vertebra are severed.

starting at the lungs and esophagus, one guy pulls the gut mass down, and the other carefully cuts free the tendons that hold it into the body cavity.

Working the gut mass towards the tail of the pig.

almost out

Looking at it from the other direction, you an see the gut mass is now mostly outside of the pig

and with the guts removed, a small hatchet is used to cut the ribs along one side of the backbone, and then the other side, and the two sides are lifted out and put into the cooler for more processing back at the house.

Pork belly (fresh!)

Finally only the skin and backbone remain. They make pozole, a stew of the head and spine out of it. they hack the backbone into 6" chunks.

The other ingredient for pozole

The entire pig fit into an 80 quart cooler.

Enjoy your pig, Rafael!

Last years hay is about done

The pigs have been messing with the little bit of hay that I've got left. They like nothing better than to snooze in the sun on a good bed of hay. I'll be tossing the remaining bales to the cows and sheep this week and then rotating the cows and sheep onto their summer pasture.

Those three little pigs on the left top of the picture are dreaming little piggy dreams. They twitch and grunt and so on when they sleep, like dogs. If you look closely in the hay right in front of the big sow you'll see a little piggy that's burrowed into the hay -- apparently direct sunlight isn't warm enough for that little piggy. Click on the picture for a bigger view.

Lazy day

Temperatures in the 60s today -- and the pigs think it's too darned hot. That's big momma, the pink pig, in her coating of mud. The other pigs are alternating sunbathing and mud bathing. It helps that they're around the feeder. "happy as a pig in slop" is a saying I've heard, and I didn't really understand it until I start to farm pigs. A happy pig is one that is sleeping on a pile of food, or mud, or mud and food mixed up together.

That feeder in the background sure has made life easier. It holds 2,000lbs of food (1 ton) at a time, and keeps it dry and in good condition. Means I only have to fill it every other week or so -- beats the heck out of carrying buckets every day. A little spendy; I recall it being north of $700 including shipping, but well worth the cost in my opinion.

Pinky takes the piglets for a stroll

Here's pinky with her whole brood. She's been in a pen for the past month or so, and is glad to get out. Her piglets are big enough to fend for themselves with the herd, so we're turning them loose for a few hours each day. Pinky is still nursing the piglets, but is spending more and more time away from them. This encourages the piglets to eat solid food and drink water.

Commercial pig operations will often separate pigs from sows at 2 to 3 weeks. I prefer to let the pigs grow to full size by keeping them on the sow for 7 to 8 weeks. The piglets are running around squealing with joy and curious about everything.

Here the piglets are running at me in a group. So fast, in fact, that I can't take the picture fast enough to catch them all. They're fascinated by my muddy boots.

The long pig farrows

The long pig is a china/hampshire cross. She's named the long pig because she is really much longer than the other pigs. I thought it would be interesting to throw some longer pig into my herd, so kept her and bred her instead of selling her earlier.

I got her from a fellow who thought that he wanted to pig farm, but then realized about 4 months into it that you actually need to care and feed for the animals every single day. Surprise!
I'll buy individual animals if I think that they're nice looking, or entire litters from other farmers from time to time. I do that to have the opportunity to grow them out and look at them to see if there's something interesting I'd like to add in terms of genetics to my herd. The jury is out as to whether the long pig will work out on pasture as a mother though. Hope she does.

The color variation is pretty fun. You can see the faint outline of the characteristic hampshire stripe on the long pig -- the white on the front shoulder with the black rear. But the piglets are wildly spotted and dappled. Click on the picture for a bigger version.

While I'm taking these pictures the long pig is giving a serious of low contented grunts as she nurses her piglets. GRUNT! GRUNT! GRUNT!

Pinky's piglets

Pinky has been doing a very good job with her first litter. I'm hopeful we'll wean all of them, but time will tell. Right now the piglets are spending quite a bit of time messing with each other, burrowing in the hay, and sleeping.

Pinky is a solid pink pig like the one on the left, the boar is a seriously spotted pig. Makes for interesting combinations.

The piglet facing us is colored like his/her dad, but is mostly pink.

Red n blacks piglets are a completely different color scheme. Same dad.

Here's dad, patrolling the perimeter fence for tasty grass.

Pinky farrowing

Pinky had her first litter of piglets today. She got her name because she's a perfect pink pig. She's a little vocal, being the loudest gilt (now a sow).


She's in the other farrowing stall that I constructed in this post and has about a foot of hay underneath her, to absorb liquids and provide dry bedding for the little pigs.


She's dug quite a hole in the hay.
The piglets nurse, and sleep, and cuddle up to her belly. Every now and then they'll wander around a little -- which I always find amazing at an hour or two old. All is well.