Sir Loin of Pork and his siblings are growing bigger and bigger! They are now about 3 months old, and we estimate they are about 125 pounds in size. They have another 3 or 4 months to go, probably about April we will be considering them for finishing. These are red Durrock heritage hogs and they are leaner than say the regular white hogs that most commercially available meat is from.

So far our investment in the last three months has been pretty easy. We’ve paid $42 dollars in feed and $25 for our piggy. We’ve been learning about the whole process so that we can try it ourselves in the spring. I know that they will eat more as they grow, but still, I don’t think it will be very high. They are getting lots of extra goodies, like bread and table scraps, pumpkins and gourds and whatever else everyone can find for them! They will eat just about anything. Unfortunately, they killed Buck, our neighbors pretty Cochin rooster! And there was little left. That is a little scary, but then, they are hogs and not vegetarians… When we construct our pen, we will need to make sure that our crazy little free range hens stay out of the pen!

The local feed mill puts together 500 pounds of feed for them for under $100. It pays to ask your local feed folks about discounts for larger pounds of feed. They can mix it for you too, in different formulations and such, and for different ages as well. Apparently, they will do it for just about any animal you wish to feed. We’re going to be looking into chicken feed just as soon as we can muster up enough cash for it. (And places to keep 500 pounds of feed!)

We’re waiting for them to get to be about 300 to 350 pounds live weight. They should dress out to about 180 to 200 pounds when finished. I’m figuring another 40 or 50 dollars in feed and then processing cost of about $200 or so. That will end up costing us about $320 for about 200 pounds of meat. $1.60 a pound for hams, loin roast, sausage, bacon, ribs, chops and all that. I think it should last us a good long time. We’re going to share some with Steve and probably a few friends, because that just sounds like a good thing.

What I think has been interesting is seeing how they act and want to be. They are very clean, in that they have an area of their big pen that they do their potty business, and another area to sleep in and the two don’t mix. They run about and frolic with each other, but they also seem to really like to sleep and just chill out. They really just want to eat and snooze! Haha… Doesn’t seem to be real hard to keep them. Lots of food and fresh water and a heat lamp to sun themselves under. And lots of good clean straw to snuggle and snooze in. Can’t wait! Should be interesting to raise pork for our table along with chicken, veggies and fresh eggs. Just something that we feel good about.