Hogs

~HOGS~

For Late Summer or Fall Butcher  Dates

*We may have some hogs available for sale for our 2016 production year depending on how many hogs the kids decide to show this year.  If you would like to be put on a list as these come available, please contact us.*

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~How We Raise Our Hogs~

We start with little guys in the spring from a local hog producer, and feed them up until they are tasty pork for your freezer and table!  

They get hand fed lots of garden goodies!  We plan extra in our garden production to be able to feed them a constant diet of fresh produce as well as commercial feed for their basic nutrition needs.  We plant a dedicated area in the garden as a pig plot featuring mangel beets, turnips, spinach, canola, and other extra veggie seeds that hogs like.  This helps give them a more varied diet with extra vitamins and minerals as well as something to forage for to be more active during their growing process.  They are wormed regularly with proper withdrawal periods before butchering.

The day we picked them out, this is the hog manager, he is in charge of the hog project on the farm.  Evan is 14 years old and has done a nice job feeding, and tending to the hogs' needs these past 3 years.  This year 3 of our kids old enough to participate in 4-H will be raising their own hog (and paying for all expenses themselves)!  That will give them even more experience and understanding about raising hogs than they already had.

They say happy hogs are ones that have mud up to their eyeballs.  I think we have that covered!

When we have sold them in previous years we usually take deposits in the spring to reserve a whole or half hog (usually $50 for a half hog, $75 for a whole hog deposit).  We charge a flat fee for a half or whole hog purchase (last year it was $225-250 for half hog, $450 for whole hog *prices will change from year to year depending on feed/piglet costs*).  The first year we tried to price it per pound at hanging weight, but it was too difficult to guess how much it would dress out at and people needed an exact number to budget for.  So we moved to flat fees and adjusted at the end if someone needed a small credit for having a smaller hog than the others etc.  It usually comes out very fair, we make it right if there is any that are more than a 10 lbs difference between each hog.  That seems to work quite well for both us and the customers.

Once the hogs reach the 300 lb live weight range, or just under, we send them to a local processor. Their hanging weights come out around 200 lbs typically.   We usually process our hogs through either Eastern Oregon Mobile Slaughter, out of Hermiston, OR.

There is the scoop on our hog production practices, thanks for following along!  If you have any questions please feel free to give us a call.  You can find our contact info on the "Contact Us" tab above.