Whole Hog Share... That's a lot of meat??

Whole hog shares… That’s a lot of meat?

It’s intimidating, I know. You hear “whole hog” and for most people the first thing that comes to mind is “that’s a lot of meat!” And it is.. but its not as crazy as it sounds.

For starters, we sell our hog shares at hanging weight. Hanging weight is the weight that the animal is once it ARRIVES to the butcher after it has been culled off here at the farm. This weight does not include hooves or head (we also like to give customers the option to keep the head and hooves). Anyway, this is not necessarily the weight in product you will receive. From hanging weight you will receive approximately 75% in take home product. There are many factors in what determines your take home weight, mostly what YOU chose.

So, the butcher will get your hog and then call you to discuss cuts, or preferences. By the way, don’t be afraid to ASK your butcher questions! There were so many things I had no clue about when butchering pigs and had to learn the hard way. The butcher wants you to be happy with how your animal is processed so ask, do some research, the last thing you want is to be stuck with cuts you don’t want to cook. Everyone has a different style or desires in cuts. For example, you want bone in chops? Then say goodbye to baby back ribs, do you want fresh pork belly or bacon? You can keep the bones, you can keep the extra fat that has been trimmed off. There is a lot of options when breaking down butchering and many if the options determine how much weight you will get back in product in the end. But it still is a really good amount of meat. Your going to be getting a huge variety of pork cuts. Hams, chops, ribs, steaks, roasts, tenderloin, fresh ground, sausage options, and most importantly BACON!

To give you an idea of a whole hog share… our hogs usually dress out around 200 pounds, give or take 20 pounds. Assume you will buy one hog per year, keep in mind that is a WHOLE year… 365 days, not that you’ll eat pork everyday (which you totally can, we eat pork at least 5 days a week) but keep that in mind when your looking at numbers. Let’s talk bacon, because when most people think pig they think bacon. From that one pig your going to get approximately 14-18 pounds of bacon. If you put them in lets say around 1 pound per package and every time you need bacon for breakfast you pull out a package. That makes about 14-18 days of breakfast. 14-18 days out of 365, not too many! Ribs? Each pig is going to give you 2 racks of baby backs, that is if you get boneless chops. If you do bone-in chops you will receive none, I often do the hog half and half.. so we only get 1 pack per hog! You will receive 2 racks of spare ribs, each pack is roughly 2 pounds. Depending on the size of your family, that is at max 4 nights worth of dinner. 4 nights out of 365, not a lot!

Move on to ground and sausage. This is likely the most amount of product you will receive (close tie with pork chops, you get a good amount of those too) most of what gets trimmed off to create your prime cuts is going to be turned into ground options. Our butcher gives you options for sausages, you can do linked or bulk (picture a package similar to ground beef), they can even do hotdogs. This again is going to determine how much you will get but estimate around 30-40 lbs of ground product from each whole hog share. This would include things like your breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, chorizo (YUMM) if you like it spicy! All in 1 pound packages, again in the grand scheme of a year, that’s not a lot of meals.

Keep in mind this is all based on our experience with our whole hog butcher. Every butcher is different and may have some different options or ways of how they handle whole hogs. For example our USDA butcher that we use for our market pork cuts does things slightly different. But know that rarely changes the amount of product your going to be taking home.

Storage.. how big of a freezer do you need? We have a bunch of different freezers. Stand up, chest freezers, all in a variety of sizes. We started with a 9 cubic foot chest freezer and a whole pig fits PERFECTLY. A 7 cubic foot freezer will work as well, but your wiggle room when digging through is going to be a little harder to navigate. Stand up or chest? That’s all personal preference. Stand up is nice for organizing because it makes accessing everything a little easier, but chest works great if you don’t mind stacking everything. A little side note, if you have stand up freezer get some plastic bins, it will help so much with stacking everything and eliminate the risk of stuff falling out.

Overall, the decision to buy a whole hog share is definitely a commitment. You are going to be getting a LARGE amount of meat all at once and have to worry about storage etc. But investing all at once is such a great option. Especially because, YOUR GOING TO EAT IT. And its fun to get creative! I found that once I had a freezer full of pork I looked for other ways and things to cook using it.

Also, there are half hog options. If a whole hog is not for you then a half hog is a great choice. You’ll get half everything I’ve talked about in this post, a great option if you don’t want to worry about as much storage or are nervous about that whole hog purchase. Just note that is around 75 pounds of take home meat.

Hope this eases some of your nerves about a whole hog (or half) share purchase. And yes, it is A LOT of meat. Just know that in the big picture of a whole year, it is completely realistic. You wont be disappointed, especially when you open your freezer and see a huge variety of delicious pork!

Until next time- Elizabeth