How much does it cost to raise a pig: July, 2010

Question from email:  "I'm interested in raising my own pig to eat.  What will it cost me?"

For pigs, the cost of raising is pig is the cost of the newly weaned pig + the cost of the feed to bring the pig to market weight + the cost of the pen to keep it + the cost of the labor.


In western Washington, where I farm, a weaner pig will cost you $85. It will take between 600 and 800lbs of feed to get that pig to market weight at $290/ton (July 2010 price). Using the higher weight, that's $116 in feed, giving you a hard-cost of $201.

having someone come to your farm and kill the pig will cost $55, and for that price they will shoot the pig, skin it, gut it and split it down the backbone. For an additional $0.55/lb they'll cut it into your pork chops and roasts and so on.

Adding it all up, you'll pay $201 for the pig and feed, $55 for the kill, and $110 for the cut-and-wrap, for a total of $366. This will yield approximately 150lbs of meat, for a cost per lb of $$2.44

I'm not calculating any labor in this and I'm ignoring the price of your pigpen.

People do this all the time. You know exactly what your pig was fed, you have the opportunity to get closer to your food, and you can reduce these costs by using food sources other than purchased feed (surplus bread, expired dairy, etc)

Tractor tire wrestling

One thing that I've learned about heavy equipment is that you either pay for it in payments -- as when you buy it new -- or you pay for it in maintenance.  My big kubota tractor has been all sorts of useful on the farm, but being the thrifty individual I am, I purchased it used, and so have been going through it slowly fixing stuff that the previous owner(s) didn't do correctly. 
  Some of this is small stuff; they used regular hex nuts instead of lug nuts on the wheels -- that's small to fix, but its a dangerous jerry-rig.  After I spotted that I went through the tractor and looked at every pin and bushing, and sure enough, found several where they'd used the wrong part.  Fixing that stuff was a bit more complicated -- in one case they'd stopped making the part, and I had to have it fabricated, but now I'm pretty sure that the tractor is good in all respects and safe to operate.  But all of that costs time and money -- which I wouldn't have spent (probably) if I'd bought a new tractor. 
  Another big expense is the darned tires.  In this case the tires are down to about 10% tread, I got a hole in one of them, and after taking it off, found that the tire had ten (10!) patches in it, so I bit the bullet and bought a new set of rear tires. 

The tire itself probably weighs 250lbs.  Then you fill it with 800lbs of water saturated with calcium.  I don't know why calcium is there -- maybe to prevent the water from freezing or retard rust, dunno -- and so each tire weighs in at comfortably over 1,000lbs.  So you pump the liquid out of the tires through the valve stem, which takes about 30 minutes per tire, into two 55 gallon drums per tire.

Then you dismount the tire, and beat on it with a sledgehammer, and eventually remove it from the wheel.  and do something similar to put it back on.  This is just sooo much fun that I had to share it-I called the local tire place and had them do the work.  Took 3 hours. 

 With the tire off I get to see parts of the tractor that I don't usually.  This is a huge cast iron weight that's bolted onto the rear hub.   I put a quarter up there for size; it's probably 15" wide by 30" tall, and about 4" thick.  I'd guess a weight of 700lbs for this bit.  All of the weight - tires, wheel weights, calcium -- is there so that you can lift heavy loads with the front loader and not tip over forward. 

Well, after watching this for a while, the new tires are pretty, and all for less than the cost of two weeks in Hawaii with an open bar!  woo hoo!

piglet physical therapy

This little girl piglet got her head stepped on by mom and a big piece of skin ripped off her shoulder.  So to give her a good chance of making it to adulthood we took her home and stitched her up.  It's not really economic to do this, but I hate to see a little animal go, and she's doing fine.   Normally piglets of this size are running around after mom making what I call the booby squeal -- "lay down!  I want to nurse!  lay down mom!!" and so on.  So what we're doing here is getting the piglet to exercise the bruised muscles and bring some tone back.  This is the first time this piglet has been on a treadmill.  they learn REALLY quickly that the treadmill means food and running, and pretty soon she'll be hopping up there when its feeding time, squealing her impatience. 

After she's got the hang of it a little better, we'll move the bottle behind the mesh at the head.  she still gets to drink, but has to stay up towards the top of the treadmill.  We use this treadmill for all of the animals at the house.