Homesteading - Trip to the Butcher

Today was last trip for hogs at the butcher until winter so we loaded up my half wild half duroc male hog. This guy is far from the largest we have but is very lean and mean to make up for it. The last to features actually makes him harder to load and handle then our larger males. This guy is strong, fast and being lean makes him a great jumper also. Here he is emerging from his pen.

I really did not want to butcher this guy since he produces fantastic fast growing babies but with us getting ready to move our other boars to breed our larger girls we just did not want to have to mess with him.

You can see I used pallets to build a wall of support and then used cattle panels in front to increase the height so he would not jump it. The panels themselves are not heavy enough on their own and a large hog will lift them and go right under but the combination of both together really creates a great barrier.

The pictures don't do him justice. I did not even realize how large he was until we got him up in the air and I could see he was almost 7 ft long and that is butt to snout. He should yield some nice meat but we don't get much bacon off these half wild hybrids since they have a large shield and are a learner hog then most other breeds.

He will produce a really nice looking skull for sale though. We should get enough off the skull and tusk to cover the cost of the butcher. The older the hog and the larger the tusk the more they sell for. A larger 10 inch tusk from a hog in good shape can bring several hundred dollars from the right buyer and since most farms now cut the tusk so they don't grow their is a very limited supply of quality tusk from older hogs which is why they bring a nice price.