Processing a Pig at Home: Slaughtering, Butchering, and Sausage Making

Processing a pig at home is a big job, but it’s one of the most rewarding skills you can develop on a homestead. From the first cut to the final pack of sausage in the freezer, handling every step yourself means nothing goes to waste—and you know exactly how your food was raised and prepared. In this guide, I’ll walk you through our home butchering process, including how we slaughter, skin, break down the carcass, and make sausage from scratch.

Harvest day is one of the most important—and intense—days on a homestead. It starts with sharpening knives, prepping the tractor, and clearing the kitchen for a full day of work. For us, processing pigs at home isn’t just about food. It’s about responsibility, self-reliance, and making use of every part of the animal we’ve raised.

We butcher our own pigs for several reasons. It gives us full control over the process from start to finish, avoids stressful transport for the animal, and keeps the entire harvest on the homestead. Since we don’t sell any meat, home butchering is fully legal in Vermont when it’s for personal consumption.

I’ll be honest—this part of homesteading is never easy. We spend nearly a year raising each pig, and we get to know them well. But if I’m going to eat meat, I’d rather take on the moral responsibility myself than outsource it. Maybe I watched Old Yeller too young, but I believe this process deserves intention and respect.

How to Slaughter a Pig at Home

The process begins with a clean, humane kill. We use a firearm to stun the pig with a single shot to the head. Once the pig is fully down, we cut the throat to bleed it out quickly. Some traditional European methods skip the stun and go straight to the cut, but after doing this myself, I can’t imagine the skill and strength that would take. Even with the pig fully stunned, it takes real effort to get through 1–2 inches of thick hide and fat to reach the main arteries.

After the cut, we hoist the pig using the tendons in the back legs and hang it from our tractor bucket. Before we had the tractor, we did this by hand—and that’s not a process I’m eager to repeat. A fully grown pig can weigh 300 to 350 pounds, and getting it elevated quickly and safely is crucial for proper bleeding and cleanliness.

Scalding vs. Skinning a Pig

The next step is to either scald and scrape the pig to remove the hair or skin it entirely. Scalding preserves the skin and yields a more traditional finish (especially if you’re making cured hams or cracklings), but it requires a large vessel of near-boiling water and a way to keep it hot. Our neighbor uses a fire under an old oil drum, which works, but we haven’t set up a system like that yet.

Instead, we choose to skin our pigs. It’s simpler with the equipment we have and still results in high-quality cuts. The main loss is the skin and a small layer of fat. A proper skinning knife with a rounded tip makes a big difference—it helps avoid puncturing the hide or meat while allowing controlled cuts across large areas.

Gutting and Breaking Down the Carcass

Once the pig is skinned, we open the abdominal cavity and remove the internal organs. This part takes care and practice, especially if you want to keep the organs clean and usable for stock or cooking. From start to finish—shooting, bleeding, skinning, and gutting—this part of the process takes us about an hour.

At that point, we move the carcass into a cold place to chill overnight if possible. A fully chilled pig is easier to cut and less prone to spoilage. If temperatures are above 40°F, we begin butchering immediately.

Butchering and Sausage Making

The butchering process involves breaking the pig down into primal cuts and then into smaller roasts, chops, ribs, and trim for sausage. This part takes another 3–4 hours, depending on how much we’re grinding.

Our first year, we used the meat grinder attachment for a KitchenAid stand mixer. It worked, but it was painfully slow—about 5 minutes per pound. Eventually, we upgraded to a LEM 3/4 hp meat grinder, and that changed everything. The new grinder processes 7 pounds per minute and produces clean, well-textured sausage without mashing the meat.

This year, we focused heavily on sausage. Instead of leaving whole shoulders, we boned everything out into small roasts and ground the rest for sausage.

Perhaps someday we’ll go through the process of cleaning our own sausage casings, but for now, we buy natural sausage casings ready to use.  They come pre-packaged in salt.  Soak them to remove the salt and moisten them, and they’re ready to use in about half an hour. The process was much simpler than expected.

How Much Meat Does a Pig Yield?

After processing, we ended up with about 175 pounds of marketable cuts from a pig we estimated at 350 pounds live weight. That’s about 50% yield, which is typical for home-processed pigs. In addition to meat, we made full use of the bones, organs, and fat:

• 90 lbs sausage
• 40 lbs ham roasts
• 15 lbs shoulder roasts
• 15 lbs ribs
• 8 lbs chops
• 5 lbs shank
• 4 lbs tenderloin
• 42 quarts pressure-canned stock
• 5 gallons rendered lard

The stock alone filled our pressure canner three times over—each run yielding 14 quarts in our  30 quart All-American Pressure Canner.

Beyond meat and stock, we were able to render 5 full gallons of lard.  Yes, that’s right.  Five full gallons of rendered lard. 

Pigs are usually harvested much younger than 1 year old because feed conversion is better.  We planned to breed this pig, but plans changed and into the freezer she went.

We first grind the fat to make it easier to render, and then slow process it on the stove at low heat.  It’s an all-day process, properly rendered pork lard tastes clean enough to bake into a pie crust without the slightest hint of pork flavor.

We rendered the fat slowly over low heat after grinding it to increase surface area and yield. The result was clean, white lard suitable for pie crusts, cooking, and even soapmaking.

Home Pork Processing Videos

Processing a pig at home isn’t easy work, but it’s deeply rewarding. You build skills, take full responsibility for your food, and waste nothing. Every part of the animal—from the bones to the fat to the organs—can be put to good use.

If you’re new to butchering, I highly recommend watching instructional videos like those from Scott Rea, a true artist and educator in traditional butchery techniques. His clear demonstrations gave us the confidence to take the next step and make our own cased sausages this year.

With each pig we process, we get better at using every cut, managing our time, and making the most of the harvest. It’s hard work, but worth every minute.

Pork Processing Resources

For more on what to expect from your home harvest, check out Estimating Your Pork Harvest: From Live Weight to Cooked Yield.

Looking to preserve your stock? Don’t miss my guide to Canning Bone Broth or Making Organ Meat Stock. You can also learn How Much It Costs to Raise a Pig and plan your next season of homegrown pork.