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A pig on the hoof is a far cry from cooked pork on your plate. Live weight transitions to hanging weight, then cut weight and finally to cooked yield. At each stage in the process, a little bit comes out, leaving you with only a small portion of the pig’s original size.
Calculating your yield before you harvest a pig is a bit like counting your eggs before they’re hatched. But unlike eggs, which will either hatch or not when their time comes, the time to harvest a pig is up to the farmer. How do you determine when to process a pig?
Determining when to process a pig has a lot to do with age, feed conversion, and your personal preference.
How big an animal do you really want to handle? How much ham do you really need? I can’t answer those questions, but I can help you figure out how much pork you have in your pasture on the hoof (no scale required).
How to Weigh a Pig with A String
The first step is to figure out how much your pig weighs now. A local Vermont farmer the next town over figured out a remarkably accurate way to weigh a pig with a string. The string method uses the length of the pig from the head (just between the ears) to the base of the tail and the girth of the pig right (behind the front legs) to estimate the total live weight.
For measurements taken in inches, the equation is as follows:
Live Weight = (Length x Girth^2) / 400
We’ve used this method with several of our pigs and found it to be remarkably accurate.
Let us imagine we used that method, and the result was a 250 lb live pig.
Live Weight Compared to Hanging Weight of a Pig
How does live weight compare to hanging weight of a freshly processed pig?
Once the blood and viscera are removed, our 250 lb pig would lose about 70 lbs of viscera and blood in the transition from live weight to 180 lbs hot hanging weight (freshly processed). That’s an initial loss of 28% of the initial weight.
The pig carcass loses another 3% during chilling due to additional moisture loss, taking us down to roughly 175 lbs chilled hanging weight.
Hanging Weight Compared to Cut Weight
How much is the pork carcass going to yield in marketable cuts?
The chilled hanging weight still includes the head, trotters, tongue and other oddments which are generally not sold as commercial cuts. They’re all still useful, but their market price is near zero.
Removing the oddments takes you down to roughly 125 lbs cut weight or 50% of your initial live weight.
Cut Weight Compared to Cooked Weight for Pork
Cooking will take your final yield down still further. Per the USDA, cooked pork yields somewhere between 74 and 96% of the cut weight, depending on the cut and cooking method.
On average, cooked meat will yield 80% of the cut weight. (The big exception is bacon, which yields roughly 30%.) That takes your cut weight of 125 lbs down to 100 lbs cooked yield on your plate.
Calculating the Weight of a Pig after Processing
So what if you processed your pig, and you know your total yield, but you’re curious how much that pig weighed on the hoof?
Using this process, we can extrapolate backward from cut weight to find out the approximate live weight of an animal. One of our home processed pigs yielded roughly 175 lbs of cut weight, which means her other weights were as follows:
Hot Hanging Weight: 252 lbs
Chilled Hanging Weight: 244 lbs
Cut Weight: 175 lbs
Cooked Yield: 140 lbs
Our 350 lb home harvested pig on the hoof landed on the plate at a total of 140 lbs.
With the rising costs of poultry in the meat industry fluctuating as often as it does, how much profit would an average size pig carcass bank?
Hi George,
There are too many variables to even estimate the profit from an average size pig carcass.
Do you have woods, brushland, or pastures the pigs can forage on?
Crop fields the pigs can clean up after the crops are harvested?
Spoiled or leftover produce from local grocery stores?
Kitchen scraps from restaurants?
Or will you be buying bags of commercial pig/hog/swine feed?
What size do you consider ‘average’?
Most very small farms and homesteads sell shares in live meat animals – but if you
have access to USDA processing and can meet your State laws for selling meat by the cut,
you can make a LOT more per hog / pig.
Hope this info help people consider the factors involved.
Hey Ashley,
I am considering different methods of raising self-reliance in a rural part of Uganda. The people are basically un-educated, malnourished and children are abandoned because parents cannot afford to feed them or sometimes killed and the officials do not have anything to offer them.
Anyways, one thing that I considered is learning how to raise pigs and teach them. The idea is something like buy two pigs, mate them and train the first person to care for the pigs. After 8 weeks two of of the piglets would be given to another needy person, who is taught how to care for the pigs and the original owner keeps the rest. Undesirable parts are given to people in the community to consume. Of course there is the issue of in-breeding…but based on this article, I am not sure if this is a cost-effective model for very poor people. What are your thoughts
Pigs require a pretty incredible amount of feed, and I don’t think they’d be a good option when calories are already in short supply. A better option would be goats, where they convert foods that humans can’t digest (ie. grass, tree leaves, etc) into meat and milk. There’s a lovely children’s book about using goats for just this purpose in rural Africa that I found in a free pile and my daughter loves called Beatrice’s Goat.
Good points! Yet it depends.
Africa is a huge continent with varied climates and areas.
Many heritage type breed are super feed -efficient, and can forage most of their own food,
depending on the setting. American Guinea Hogs practically ‘live on air’ – and like Kunekune,
Mulefoot, Ossibaw, and even Idaho Pasture ‘Pigs’ and others – they make good use of grasses
and other plants.
We raised AGH, KK, and IPP on tiny amounts of grain – plus whatever they could fine in pastures
and woodlots, with some kitchen, orchard, and garden waste / scraps.
Swine also root up small burrowing mammals and catch and eat snakes- and are resistant to
snake venom. The can eat any parts of the goats, chickens, etc that people don’t eat.
Milk or eggs that have begun to spoil… and all kinds of things.
You re right – commercial ‘factory arm’ type hogs would not be a good choice for Africa –
or for homesteaders and small farms in the USA – or anywhere, really.
Hi Tammy,
I read Ashley’s article about rabbits!
I think this would be great for your area, especially if you’re doing it for children this seems to be pretty fail proof up to some point. And lesser overhead investment.
https://practicalselfreliance.com/pasture-rabbits/
Yes, your idea can work! Heifer Project International (now just ‘Heifer’), has been doing something like this for many years with poultry, goat, cattle, and other animals – to help poor people in rural areas to care for themselves and their families – and help lift themselves and their communities out of poverty.
Avoid commercial type pig breeds from the USA or Europe, or even China (I have heard they killed off most of their unique and special native pigs/hogs and are raising commercial type hogs from the USA in buildings.)
Heritage type pig that are naturally healthy, hardy, and feed-efficient, breeds / crosses / landraces / types that have retained good mothering skills and farrow (deliver their piglets) without needing help are essential for the success of a project like yours.
In the USA, American Guinea Hogs are small and grow slowly – but can thrive on very little to no purchased grain. If enough waste from kitchens, from slaughtering other animals, crop waste they can eat, and/or areas they can forage for plants, roots, nuts, and seeds, they can thrive.
My other choices would be Kunekune or Idaho Pasture Pigs. These are almost as feed efficient as AGHs, but grow
faster, especially IPPs.
These pigs/ hogs will also eat small mammals they dig up from burrows, and kill and eat snakes.
Swine of all kinds are resistant to snake venom.
On inbreeding – if you start with an unrelated pair, or a pair from two different breeds or types of hog / swine,
you can breed the brothers and sisters together without any problem. Probably for at least a couple generations with little risk of problems. Parent to offspring is a much higher level of inbreeding.
We hope you were able to find suitable pigs