Pig slaughter video critique

I got this reply to my post on "can I slaughter my own pig", and thought it worth commenting.
I kill pigs every week of various sizes, so I'm a sympathetic audience. I'm offering this as a way to improve the slaughter experience.

Anonymous said...
I documented the whole process of slaughtering and processing a pig on a farm. You may be interested to watch it. The whole process from pig to sausage took about 2 days so I've cut that down to about 20 minutes here

The pig was pretty tame; and they had some problems getting it into the position that they wanted to use to slaughter it. The basic plan was to hang the pig and stick it while hanging to collect the blood. Several points:

1) The pig was tame and used to being handled -- shows good husbandry in my opinion. Arrange the slaughter area so that there's a solid barrier around the area. A tarp, or plywood
or boards or pallets. If this pig hadn't been so tame it would have been very difficult to get it into position. Consider shooting it directly in its pen and then dragging it out with the backhoe
on the tractor.

2) hanging the pig while conscious by one leg was not necessary. There was discussion of shooting the pig, and I'd recommend that. Shoot the pig on the ground, loop a rope around its leg within 5 seconds of shooting, and hoist it then. Stick it as soon as its hoisted.

3) the pig took longer to bleed out than I would have liked; they had to make three or four cuts to get the blood flow started, opening the meat on the neck to potential contamination. I'd suggest sticking the pig in the chest, just above the breastbone. To find this location, feel your breastbone at the top of your ribs, just below your throat. You want to insert the knife about an inch above that point. The point of the knife is angled at about 15 degrees towards the tail of the animal, with the cutting edge towards the head. Insert the knife until you feel it hit the backbone, and then trace a line with the point of the knife towards the head. if you don't see a gush of blood, withdraw the knife 3" -- but not out of the wound, angle it, insert to backbone and retrace your line. You may have to move a little to one side or the other.

You can practice this cut motion with a pencil. Make a circle with your thumb and forefinger. Hold this about 4" above a table top. Insert a pencil into this circle, and then draw a line on the table top Keeping the knife in the circle of your fingers is important. You want to make sure that you minimize the size of the entrance wound.

4) I'd suggest getting the pig completely scraped before you open the pig. Removing hair by any method after the meat is exposed can lead to contamination. Singeing is probably the least risky way to do it -- the high temperature will sterilize it a bit, but I'd prefer to not have sterile hairs to deal with while I'm processing the meat.

5) The pig had food it its digestive tract at time of slaughter -- penning the pig and giving it all the water it wants but no food for 24 hours to get most of the contents out prior to slaughter. It has the other benefit of making the pig much more interested in food making it easier to lure with a tasty apple.

Pig slaughter class

I'm going to be slaughtering a pig for my own consumption in about two weeks. If you are in the greater Seattle area and would like to learn how to slaughter your own animal, you're welcome to come and watch and learn.

I've taught adult level classes for most of a decade on a variety of topics; this particular event is a dry run of a class I'm thinking about offering, and as such it'll be informal, and hands-on, and your price of admission is answering questions from me about the class itself -- feedback.

The commitment is 3 hours on a saturday morning, from 10am to 1pm.

Covered:

Preparation for slaughter
Tools
Equipment
Supplies
Prepping the animal

The kill
Brief discussion of legal kill methods
My preferred kill: .22 bullet
Methods of capturing the blood if you need/want to

Scalding/scraping vs skinning
Why scrape when skinning is easier
Prepping for scraping
Scraping the pig

Field dressing/gutting a pig
opening the belly
Inspection of organs
Brief discussion of cleaning intestines for use as sausage casing

-----------Up to here is what you need to know to dress a pig for a whole-pig BBQ. Past this is what you'll need to know to continue to break down the pig into "retail" cuts - what you're used to seeing in the supermarket.

How to split a pig with a meat saw or axe

Dividing the pig into primal cuts
Belly
loin
Shoulder
Ham

Splitting the pig into halves, and then into primal cuts (Shoulder, ham, belly, loin)

After the pig is split into the primals you're basically at the "costco" point of butchery -- you have large roasts and hams that you'll recognize from costco.

Send me an email if you're interested, and tell me what you'd like to get out of this. Are you a producer who'd like to kill their own pigs? Do you raise pigs for your family and want to save money on cut-and-wrap fees? Want to know more about the process?

email me at bruceki@homeacresfarms.com

Tongan Thanksgiving feast

WARNING: THIS ENTRY CONTAINS GRAPHIC SLAUGHTER PICTURES


I've been selling an increasing number of my animals live, to people who want to prepare them themselves. Each culture has its own traditions and preferences, and each one its favorite food.


Soni and Sime have been great customers of mine. They prefer a small pig, what I call a weaner pig, usually having a live weight of 40 to 50lbs.

I'm ok with people eating animals; I eat them myself, and that's why I started farming -- to make sure the animals I eat have the best life possible while there here.

For pigs, I prefer they be shot. It's a clean and quick, humane end. There are many cultures that have a specific way they kill the pig, and while I try to be tolerant of other cultures, I've found that a bullet is the way that I prefer, and for animals killed on my farm that's what I require.


After shooting, the next step is to cut the arteries at the top of the heart while it's still beating. Most of the blood is out of the pig in a few seconds. After that, it looks like this.



Pork skin is delicious.

Pork rind (southern USA) or pork scratchings (UK) or Pork crackle (Australia) or in spanish They will be spit-roasting these pigs whole. The skin of the pig is a prized bit -- it's delicious. In the south part of the USA, they'll call it pork cracklins or pork rind. In Spanish it's chicharrones. Whatever language, many cultures all over the world love it, and Tongans are no exceptions.

There's a propane heater underneath the garbage can. Both of these guys are immensely strong; they can easily handle a 50lb pig at arms length. I'm not sure I could. They dip it in and then pull it out and quickly rub off the outer layer of skin and hair. It comes off pretty easily.

All pigs end up white after they've been scraped, no matter what color they started with. This particular animal had a moire pattern on its skin. The line there is where the outer layer of skin has been removed. These fellows dip the pig, and then pull it out and lay it down, and rub off the skin with their fingers. the fellow on the left is removing the toenails from the pig. they don't cut the feet off -- the whole pig is spit-roasted.

The head is a favorite part of the roasted pig, but there's a lot of hair on the head. It takes a while to scrape it all off. There are a lot of nooks and crannies that have to be cleaned.

There are still a few hairs here and there -- the ears are particularly problematic. So a propane torch is used to singe off the remaining hair.

The torch quicky removes the hair. They run the torch over one side, flip the pig, and finish the other side. They are very careful to get every single hair.

Now they are ready to gut it. The digestive tract of most mammals is only anchored at the mouth and anus. They reach in to the wound used to bleed the pig and cut out the vocal cords, effectively severing the connection at the head.

Now you carefully cut around the anus. The goal here is to cut the anus free, but not to cut the colon it is attached to. He makes a small square cut around the anus and poking his finger in carefully works it free, cutting as he goes.

The digestive system is pretty much free, but the opening at the anus isn't large enough to allow the liver or other large organs to come out. So an incision is now made in the belly -- but a small incison. They're going to spit-roast the animal, so they want the ribcage to be whole so that it'll be easier to spit.
Working his hand in carefully, he pulls the colon out the incision, and then the rest of the organs. The heart and lungs and kidneys also come out this same hole.

Once the organs are out, they sort through them and cut out the ones they want; in this case, the heart, liver, kidneys and lungs.

This pig is now ready to go for spit roasting. Soni and Sime -- happy holidays

If you'd like to learn how to roast a pig from here, there's a great website that goes into detail. You'll find it here http://cuban-christmas.com/pigroast.html

Total elapsed time from shooting the pig to finished pig: about 45 minutes.