Butchering a hog

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SoonerP226

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From Just a Few Acres Farm. YouTube's rules made them cut out the most graphic parts (killing and bleeding the hog and removing the entrails/internal organs), but it's not for the squeamish (or vegans).

I'd never seen a hog butchered before, so I found it interesting, and I thought some of y'all might, too. It's also a pretty good reminder that heat doesn't just come from the furnace and food doesn't come from the grocery store.

Part 1: It starts with them taking pigs to the butcher. He doesn't explicitly say it, but I'm pretty sure those are the pigs that will be processed for sale (he touches on the subject near the end of this video). Then he goes through the process of slaughtering the hog and cleaning the carcass, ending with hanging it in preparation for processing the meat.

 

SoonerP226

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I’ve only processed one personally doing it like a deer but watched a co-worker and his brother do one the old fashioned way by scalding and scraping in an old tank over a wood fire, then processing. Labor intensive process but there was little scrap.
My parents had both been involved in butchering animals, but I've never done it myself. The closest I got was watching my brother butcher chickens for the first time, which was something of a horror show (he swears that they're a lot better at it now).

My dad told me about everybody in the area getting together for a hog butchering at his folks' place, complete with scalding pots and so forth, and the fresh cracklin's and pork rinds.
 

TedKennedy

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I've butchered more hogs than I can count, but I do them like deer. I'd really like to scald one, but it seems I always end up with a pig on the ground at dark, a long way from home, and without access to a drum of scalding water. Skinned and quartered and into the ice chest it is.

If it's a good fat sow I'll try to save the back fat for making sausage, but otherwise it's gonna be pretty lean.
 

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