We purchased hogs at the fair for butcher, and the price works out to be pretty reasonable. And we get ALL the cuts for one price.

The deal I'll look for next year is this. There were extra animals offered up for sale at $150. These were 220-250 lb hogs. Here's some info on hogs and yield.

With a market weight of 250 pounds and yield of 73.6 percent, the typical hog will a produce a 184-pound carcass. The carcass will yield approximately 140 pounds of pork and 44 pounds of skin, fat, and bone.

If you were to get a hog for $150 and you got 140 lb of pork, thats a great price. Cut and Wrap of course adds to the price but still thats darn cheap and you get the chops, ham, bacon and all...

I imagine the price would be cheaper still if you bought at a regular livestock auction.

I don't think that's an option for us in So. Calif.

I bet it is. There is 4-H and FFA kids EVERYWHERE--even in urban areas. Do you have a county fair? I bet there is also a regular sale yard in SoCal.....

I just googled Orange County Fair, they do have a junior livestock auction.

You purchase the animal at the auction and then it gets sent to slaughter from there. pretty easy.

here is a link for cost/yield for the orange county fair junior livestock auction based on average prices. This doesn't take into consideration private sales at lower prices, or private contacts for butcher.

http://www.ocfjla.org/?page_id=19

That is f'ing nasty! I would rather pay the extra couple dollars per pound at the store.

Good luck and hope you have a freezer big enough to store all that meat.

Cost of the electricity bill to run that freezer
Cost of Butcher
Cost of Wrapping

And we should be almost even + you are now stuck eating pork and I can have chicken, steak or pork

Now I know why I don't eat meat..yea tofu!

well, where do you think the animals at the store come from? You're buying the same thing at a higher price.

the meat would go bad, even frozen, before we could ever eat that much.

we have gotten (slaughtered) custom-raised pigs before; but they were not HOGS and they were not feed antibiotics and were free range. we named the last one Bob.

hegemony, 150 lb of meat is too much?

That being said, we purchased a whole steer last year and we still have probably 45 cuts left, its been almost a year.

for a family of 2? yes. unless you eat pig 24/7/365.

how long do you expect the meat to last? the recommendations I've seen say 10-12 months max in a freezer.

BBQ at hegemony's

LOL. a bit warm here in Vegas for a cook-out. maybe in October.

The pork we buy will not last over a year because we will eat it all. We have a deep freeze. Our beef is coming up on a year and it is not showing signs of loss of quality yet. We have a family of 7, so this type of buying is not excessive.

One other thing I did save is gas for groceries. I don't go to the store every week as I'm over an hour from a regular store. We have a small market for milk/eggs/bread. I had to change the way I cook/buy food living where I do.

PS. butcher hogs can be split with another party, its a common thing to do.

just curious, don't you have to go to the market to buy fruit and veggies at least once a week? does your small market have such items too? perishables keep me going to the store twice a week.

do what i do .. grow your own.

I have a few things in my garden, Our store carries bananas and apples and thats about all. Also, I can and pickle during summer and autumn. I also have an apple tree but it didn't yield last year. I don't know how to take care of it, but I have apples on this year. I hope they're not wormy.

A friend and I just put up a truck bed load of corn (also in the freezer). The same friend and I gleaned potatoes last year. We had to have brought home 1000lb of pototoes, although I only took home about 250lb.

I buy frozen veggie too. The only other alternative for veggies is canned (purchased)

I don't have a pressure cooker for veggies (yet) so I have to freeze. I also want a dehydrater.

Its definatley different where I live now, considering I came from California--the agricultural center of the west.

LOL. in the mohave...oh wait. I get it.

It would come off the vine already dehydrated?

buy some soil and water it

I think he means growing herbs...

I really dislike the mush texture of meat that been previously frozen.

Well, there is one plant that you could grow, and a lot of people would pay good money for a few grams.

I believe it is Crocus sativus.

Saffron. What did you think I was talking about?

My grandparents used to do this with cows. They would go in with 3 or 4 other families and split the costs and meat. Everything was taken care of by the butchers, they just picked up the wrapped packages of meat and transfered to their deep freezer. They'd have a years worth of every cut of steak & ground hamburger for a family of 4 for about $150.

Hedge, gotta say youre wrong on this. I was/am one of those FFA/4-H kids that are everywhere.

I had a hog, Jim by name, he didnt make the sale so we ate him. He was not free range, blah blah, but he was a project that I raised myself. Paid 100 for the hog and even with the show fees and vet bills I still came out pretty good. He weighed 360 lbs day of market, butchered 300 lbs for all cuts. Family of four ate on the hog for a littlw over 2 years and the meat was very good. better that a 260 lbs wild boar my friend killed. And I am happy to report that we didnt eat hog everyday.
If you are in an area that you can do this, it is sound money wise. You can save money and you get to help out with a kids project. A better deal is to find those kids that did not make the sale. They need to get rid of the animal to make room for next years project and I have picked up steers, lambs, chickens, hogs and rabbits for way cheap. Got 50 chickens for $50 one year and you sometimes are able to pick up a steer for 1 buck a pound or less (keep in mind though that these are live animals so pounds is like 800 plus).

And yes I have had to eat my own projects, I do not feel gulity. They were not pets and I knew the reason I raised them was for meat market. Everything I did was to make better meat.

what am I wrong about?

Why is it nasty?

I'm sure she's not suggesting this route unless ya have the room for freezing and storing all that food. Many people that do buy in bulk when meats go on sale would be paying for the freezer to run anyway, so this is just another option to save money.

I do agree you should add in the cost of butchering and wrapping to see if it saves ya money though.

We ate on our hog for a good while and the meat was still good.

All my animals got antibotics to keep them healthy but no more. They were well taken care of.

I've done this for both hog and steer.

Well worth it.

Fresh cut chops and bacon, there is no substitute.

The deep freeze is necessary though, plus a good air tight seal.

The mushy taste, may be due to how it was packaged or thawed. We had no problems.

We have the rodeo/FFA in Houston where this is possible, but I go through a friend who works in the meat industry.

Slightly off topic, but if anyone ever has a chance, and is in Central Louisiana, try to get to a place called the Best Stop, in Scott/Canklin. Their Cracklin is off the hook.

there are two people who live in my house. 300 pounds of meat will go bad long before we could consumer it, unless we had meat for 99% of our caloric intake.

Yes but as someone else said, you could go in with two other couples, thus splitting the cost and each household getting only 100 lbs of meat.

You obviously don't HAVE to do this. It's a personal decision, and if it doesn't work for your family, for whatever reason, that's fine too.

I know it is a personal decision which is why I am surprised so many people think I am wrong.

I don't see how a standard fridge's freezer compartment can hold 250 lbs of meat, did you buy a meat locker or something of that sort?

Regardless, economics wise it is a pretty good deal, you are basically doing vertical integration.

But.. meat tastes best fresh & unfrozen. Some people say that vacuum sealed meat can last longer and taste better, I haven't had experience.

You can always go to Costco to their meat section and buy them bulk. They do have bulk orders, and you are basically getting them at wholesale price.

A standard freezer compartment on a refrigerator will not hold 250lbs of meat, but a chest type or standup freezer will.

We buy, feed and butcher our own also, I will never go back to buying meat out of the store there is just no comparison to fresh off the farm meat. I will bet that at some point in the processing that the "fresh" meat from the store has been frozen.

This method does not work for everyone, but it is a good option for those who can and choose to do this. Depending on the market price paid and carcass yield most times price per pound will average less the $2.00 for beef and $1.25 for pork. When was the last time you could go to the store and buy Ribeye or New York Strip for $2.00/lb or less?

Most farmers who sell off farm will sell by the 1/2 or 1/4 because there will always be some one who will buy the 1/2 or 3/4's.

Around here ground beef is $2/lb!

Exactly why we raise our own.

There are ways to make bad meat taste good. If you do the old fashioned BBQ-- first take the meat and boil it in water with vinegar for 45 minutes, then grill it on an open fire, it will taste very good. The boiling part will pull out any unpleasant freezer taste, and then when you BBQ it will taste like whatever spices you use. The meat should be fork tender and falling off the bone.

If you want Vacuum Lock; you could get a Food Saver to seal the meat up. Many times meat is delivered to the grocery frozen.
Imagine..Filet Mignon for $1 a pound !

I guess I missed the controversy.

Hedge, I don't don't think there is wrong or right here so I don't know why somebody picked on you.

The beef we bought we paid $1.40 lb, that is everything from oxtail to primerib roast. This particular critter we cut and wrapped ourselves so there was significant savings.

Our hogs we bought this year we paid 1.75 and 1.60 lb and these were little guys, so we got like 152 lb and 81 lb in the freezer (1.5 hogs) we bought one that didn't make weight for auction, neither of his hogs did so we at least helped him out of the red.

The cut and wrap were $142.54 and $75.77 for these 2. The price per pound goes up since there carcass weight is less than the live weight.

anyway. Even if I lived in the city I'd still do the hog and steer route because of the convenience of having every cut of meat in my freezer available to me. THAT was WELL worth the money of buying an entire steer.