Culling and Slaughtering Pigs: What Every Small Farmer Needs to Know

This is the chapter nobody looks forward to. But if you raise pigs for meat, this is where the whole operation leads. Understanding the process makes it less overwhelming and helps you do it humanely.

Culling Is Not the Same as Slaughter

People mix these up all the time. Culling means removing an animal from your herd. That is it. The animal might be slaughtered, but it might also be sold, rehomed, or retired to pet status. Culling is a decision. Slaughter is one possible outcome of that decision.

Reasons you might cull a pig:

• It does not meet breed standards (if you are breeding)
• You have too many animals for your space or budget
• Old age
• Chronic sickness or poor health
• Poor performance (not gaining weight, bad temperament, bad mothering)

The key thing: be certain before you cull. It is permanent. If you are new to this, get an experienced farmer involved before making that call.

Your Slaughter Options

You have three basic choices.

Send to a slaughterhouse. This is the most common option for small farmers. Someone else does the work. But do yourself a favor and visit the facility first. Check their standards, cleanliness, and how they handle animals. Not all slaughterhouses are equal.

Hire someone to come to your farm. Mobile butchers exist, and they are great. The pig stays in its familiar environment, which means less stress. The butcher handles the killing and initial processing on-site.

Do it yourself. This is an option, but do not attempt it alone the first time. Find someone experienced to teach you in person. There is a right way and a wrong way, and the difference matters for the animal and for the quality of the meat.

Nothing Goes to Waste

There is an old saying: you use everything on a pig except the squeal. That is not really an exaggeration.

The head becomes headcheese. The jowls get smoked and cured. The intestines make sausage casings. The fat renders into lard, which you can also use for soap. Every part of the animal has a purpose.

Preparing for Slaughter

Separate the animal from the rest of the herd about 24 hours before. Withhold food for 12 to 24 hours, but keep water available. An empty digestive tract makes processing cleaner and safer.

One detail people do not always mention: do not slaughter a gilt or sow that is in heat. It can affect the flavor of the meat.

Slaughter weight varies by your goal. The prime weight for a market hog is 240 to 260 pounds. For suckling pig, you are looking at 2 to 6 weeks old.

Equipment You Need

If you are doing this at home, you need:

• A .22 rifle
• Two sharp knives (you will dull one quickly)
• A sharpening stone
• A hog scraper
• A thermometer
• A large scalding vat (big enough for the whole pig)
• Food-grade buckets
• A sturdy table for processing
• A pulley system for hanging the carcass

This is not something you improvise. Have everything ready and laid out before you start.

The Process

The main objective through all of this is humane slaughter with minimal stress to the animal. A stressed pig produces lower quality meat because of the adrenaline and lactic acid.

Step 1: Dispatch. Shoot the pig point blank in the head with the .22. The correct spot is at the center of an imaginary X drawn between the ears and eyes. One shot, done right, and the pig drops immediately.

Step 2: Bleed out. This needs to happen quickly after dispatch. Hanging the pig is the preferred method as gravity helps drain the blood more completely. Thorough bleeding is important for meat quality.

Step 3: Scald. Submerge the carcass in water heated to 145 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. This loosens the hair and the outer layer of skin called scurf. Too hot and the skin cooks. Too cool and the hair will not come off. The thermometer is not optional here.

Step 4: Scrape. Use the hog scraper to remove all the hair and scurf. This takes time and effort. Get it all.

Step 5: Gut. Remove the internal organs carefully. You do not want to puncture the intestines or bladder. This is where experience really matters.

Step 6: Cool. The carcass needs to cool down to 33 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit. The best time of year for home slaughter is late fall to early winter, when the weather does a lot of this work for you naturally. In warmer months, you need a walk-in cooler or equivalent.

After cooling, the carcass is ready for butchering into cuts, curing, smoking, or whatever you have planned.

Book: Backyard Farming: Raising Pigs Author: Kim Pezza ISBN: 978-1-57826-621-0 Publisher: Hatherleigh Press, 2016

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