Slaughter info from email question

I got this question as a comment on this previous blog post.


Hi there, just about to process two pigs and was interested in viewing the video that the comments are about. The link however no longer has video on the website, is there somewhere else that it can be found?Darren NZ, newstart@xtra.co.nz

First, I want to thank Al Stevens and Sylvana Meats for letting me take pictures of them working, and for doing a great job for me when I need a farm kill. I can't say enough good things about Al. He's on time, he's quick, and he's dependable. I really like the service he provides.
If you'd like a farm kill done in the King/Snohomish county area, I'd really recommend him. You can reach him through Sylvana meats, at the number above. Al handles all animals -- beef, pigs, sheep and goats being the most common, but buffalo and others as well.

I took pictures when we were doing a farm kill of a pig of the middle part of the process.
What's happened before this sequence of pictures: The pig was shot with a .22 calibre rifle. The bullet was aimed at the center of an X formed by drawing a line from the ear to the opposite eye. You aim at where the two lines cross. I prefer to aim along the line of the body of the pig, so that the bullet ends up in the body cavity. After the shot, the pig is "stuck"; you can see the wound in the neck caused by this.

To "stick" a pig, I use a long knife, about 10" long. I turn the pig over on its back immediately after shooting. Using my hand I find the breastbone on the pig. Reach up and feel YOUR chest immediately below your chin -- feel that lowest part? that's what I find on a pig.

You insert the knife to the backbone, keeping it as straight as you can, with the edge of the knife towards the head of the pig. You then draw a line up the backbone until you get a substantial gush of blood. If you don't, check your angle, withdraw the knife about an inch, and repeat the motion.
So the pig has been shot and stuck, and then carried over to the truck. First step is to hose it off with some hot water to get any loose dirt off.

After the cleaning, the legs get cut off.

They use a big cleaver to cut off the back legs. Al, holding the legs, is a trusting individual. Notice that they've skinned the legs a little here. They've removed the hide down to the swell of the ham.

"Skinning the belly is where you have to be really careful with a pig", says Al. "You want to cut as close to the skin here as possible, so that the customer gets the full measure of bacon. "

One side done, he works down the other side. Notice that the penis sheath is under his wrist in this shot. He leaves it on at this stage, skinning away from it.

Using long strokes of the skinning knife, he's pulling the hide away as he works the skin off the belly.

With the skin off the belly, the focus shifts to the front legs and neck, carefully taking the skin off that area.

This is a shot of the front leg as the skin is removed. Lovely white fat on this pig. Perfect.

Moving to the other side, the skin is worked off the pig and laid out. What's important here is that the "meat" side of the skin stay clean. The hide continues to be worked off.

The hide is off all of the legs and most of the neck, and is only attached along the back and spine. Al uses a knife to cut the fat and muscle above the breastbone here.

Al uses his powersaw to cut through the breastbone after the fat and muscle has been cut by knife. This is after the powersaw cut.

The pig is hoisted by attaching a singletree to the hocks.

As the pig is hoisted they take care that none of the outside of the skin touch the meat. It's being slowly hoisted here.

With the pig in the air, the final skinning takes place. They skin the sides, leaving about a 12" section attached down the spine. They loosen the hide at the rear of the pig, about 18" down.

Now they take a big handful of the skin and PULL and PULL the skin off the back of the pig. In this picture the tail is still attached to the pig -- they cut it off below skin level.

A little more pulling and the hide comes off the back, and down to the back of the head and ears.

One last tug, and then some more skinning.

Here they're skinning the top of the head and jowls, cutting the ears off.

The last thing attached is the snout. Here it's being cut free.

At this point Al opens up the body cavity. You can see the guts just below his left elbow. He's reaching into the body cavity and carefully cutting around the anus and pulling it through and out.

With the carcass gutted, he brings out the power saw to cut the pig in half.

You want your halves to be as even as you can make it, so you follow the spine down, keeping your blade centered. I've cut carcasses like this with a hand meat saw. takes about 5 minutes to cut by hand, but this saw makes this cut in 30 seconds.

To lubricate the saw they spray more hot water on the carcass. This is a nice, fat pig. The meat shows good marbling as well. As a producer, I like to watch my animals go so that I can check their condition and quality. I can then compare it against what the animal looks like live.

They stop the saw when they get to the pigs head and use that big cleaver for the final split. Whack! Whack!

Probably 3" of back fat on this hog.

A US quarter is 1" in diameter. Yep, 3" of back fat. Nice fat young hog.

Loaded on the truck, it's off to be cut and wrapped for the customer.

Legal Stuff: Wood chip case

I've written in previous blog entries about the Washington State Department of Ecology's citing me for using wood chips for mulch on my farm. As with any legal situation, talking about it and possibly settling it prior to the court date is usually best. Going to court is risky for both sides, and consumes time, money and resources for both sides.

Kelly Wood, Asst. Attorney General for the state of Washington is representing ecology in this matter, and he's representing Paul Anderson, who's the Department of Ecology's enforcement officer for my region, and the fellow who cited me for this violation.

What follows is an open letter addressed to Mr. Wood:


Mr Wood:

Over the past 6 months I have tried without success to get you to allow me to do various activities on my farm. This included planting a corn crop, mowing, replacing or completing fences and tilling the ground to remove metal debris and trash incidental to both the prior use of a portion of my property as a junkyard, and because of its proximity to the highway and the trash that the highway generates. Many of these activities are covered under various laws, the right to plow law being one.

The area of my farm that your client, Mr. Anderson believes is in violation is 1/4 of an acre. Your refusal to allow me to do any work on the other 11.75 acres of my 12 acre parcel is seriously impeding my farming effort for this entire year.

I would like you to respond in writing to my request that you limit the "stop work" order that was issued by the DOE to the area that is actually involved in the wood chip dispute and that you do this in a timely fashion to prevent further disruption to my farming activities. You could do this in less than 10 minutes by drawing a rectangle on an aerial photo. If need be I will meet your client at the property and we can set boundaries that way, staking the areas in question and releasing the rest of the property.

I am open to other ideas, but since our negotiations have resulted in zero progress, I'm not optimistic that further negotiation will have any results.


Bruce King

Airedale puppies

The pups are 4 weeks old now, and I've put an ad up on nextdaypets.com advertising them for sale. They're $400 for the males, $450 for the females. This blog entry is to show folks interested what they look like right now. If you're interested in an airedale puppy, you're welcome to come visit them in person. We do ship dogs if you're not local to seattle.

These are the two I've got advertised, the male is the one on the left, the female on the right.

The coke can is in the shot for scale. They're about 2lbs each right now, growing fast.

You can see the two puppies in the back of the above photo wrestling. They spend a lot of time being lazy and gnawing on each other ears and face. And sleeping.

At this point they're eating 5 cans of food a day between the eleven pups. We're going to transition them to puppy chow/canned food mix in a day or two.

They're definitely showing signs of different temperament. Their tails are a pretty good indication of their state of mind.

I'm having trouble keeping them together for these group shots. They're all into exploring now. Noses have worked since the day they were born; eyes have been open about 2 weeks now, and they're getting the hang of this vision thing; chasing things that move, and investigating interesting things. They're right on schedule.

The markings when they're adults will be breed-standard, with tan legs and a black saddle. They're much darker when they're pups. If you'd like to see pictures of the parents, take a look here and here.

No! stop! don't run off. I have to take pictures!