Long post alert.
We raise a few hogs every year. Usually 3. They've been a bit difficult to track down over the last couple of years because we can't seem to nail down a consistent producer to buy the feeders from. We've got a large family and usually keep 1 1/2 hogs and sell the other 1 1/2. That more or less pays for all expenses, so we get our pork free, give or take maybe fifty bucks.
The costs are: usually $50 per piglet. The last couple of years, prices have gone up, and people are asking more like $100 per. Feed costs: yep, if you're gonna buy grain for them, it's about $14/bag (50lbs) right now, up from about $11 a couple of years ago. I don't have my notes with me but it will likely cost you quite a lot in feed per hog. Processing: if you just want to do a hog killin this can be very low cost, but we sell, so we got a USDA inspected slaughter house, and they get something like $75 for kill and skin and $1.20/pound in hanging weight. Something like that. Again, no notes. It comes to quite a chunk of change to get three hogs processed.
It is also hard to find a decent slaughterhouse. The one near me, Mitchell's in Walnut Cove, is booked for something like a year ahead and I can't get in. Back before the new Mitchells bought it, we brought our first set of hogs to it under old management and felt that we did not get all of our meat back. This is hard to prove and anyway everyone's always worried about this. The last few years we have gone to a place in Madison and I believe they have been honest with my meat, but the last couple of years I think labor has been an issue and the cut last year was terrible. Really bad. We're pissed every time we thaw out some "pork chops" and are embarrassed that we sold this meat to friends. But with slaughterhouses, you don't have a wide variety of choice these days. If you can do a hog killin, I'd go that way.
I'm a big believer in heritage breeds and whatnot, and I would love to raise Guinea Hogs or whatnot, but they are like 18 months for a 150-200 pound hog, and they're very fatty. Tamworths are an older breed I would go for, but they're the only one I can think of offhand. On the other hand, I also don't like the new "improved" pink pigs, which have been optimized for industrial production. We seem to get the best results with Berkshires and other breeds that have a little history on them and maybe haven't gotten all the rooting and scavenging instincts bred out. We have our hogs for about 6 months and they typically go upwards of 300 pounds in that time.
Our hogs are on almost 3 acres of pasture and woods, including a lot of mature hardwoods that drop a good amount of mast. They do forage, and most years we supplement their feed with a ton of hard boiled eggs (extras from the flock), pears and apples from our trees, and oftentimes some kind of planted crop like peanuts or sweet potatoes. But it takes a lot of feed to raise three or four hogs and even with all of our space and the extras we can feed them, we buy in a lot of grain to keep them growing fast and consistent. If you don't mind having hogs around for a couple of years, you can maybe get "acorn fed" pork, but all that acorn fed pork from Spain costs a zillion dollars for a reason. It's land- and time-intensive.
Our hogs are just behind a few strands of electric fencing, BUT when they first arrive here they go behind a physical fence that can actually restrain them, with a single hot wire inside the fence to teach them to respect electric fence. It doesn't take them long to be able to be constrained by a single wire, but if you don't train them properly, they will never be stopped by electric. We also like the real fence when they're small to help keep any canines or whatnot out. Once the hogs are big enough for me not to worry about predation, I let them go just behind the electric.
Housing is cheap--we built a little portable 8x4 shed with 2x3's and plywood for just a few bucks. Plus some roofing panels from Lowe's. OK, with plywood what it costs now, it'll probably be a bit expensive, but still.
I love raising hogs and recommend it! It's definitely worth trying to figure out. One tip--make sure you feed them on the trailer for a week or so before you're going to bring them to the slaughterhouse!
Meat chickens have some advantages over pork, in the sense that they're quick (about 6-7 weeks) and easy. But it probably costs us about $8 or $9 per bird to get our chickens in the freezer, considering all costs. We don't sell any chicken. So pork is free for us, and chicken is actually probably just as expensive as Walmart roaster chickens. On the other hand, our chicken is way better than anything you could buy. And when we butcher the birds, we also do the cut ups, so we get boneless/skinless breasts, wings, thighs and legs, etc, and just a few whole roasters. You definitely couldn't buy all the cut-ups for what we pay for our chicken. If you do meat birds, you definitely want to do the cornish cross and my view is that you need to keep them full feed 24/7. Our birds, after 7 weeks, are enormous. Like 9 pounds, many of them. A lot of people talk about getting 4 pound birds at 6 weeks. I don't know what they're feeding their birds to keep them that small!
They go on pasture at about 3 weeks old, usually in May, and we kill them in June. Stokes county extension has a rental trailer with all the equipment for killing and cleaning the birds that you can reserve for $50. It is WORTH IT! We do 60 birds in like 2 hours. (That's not counting the cutting up, but it's the whole process of getting them killed, plucked, gutted and chilled.) That's with a good size crew, me and my wife and the 5 kids. Cutting up takes another couple of hours. Clean up takes probably another couple of hours. It's a long day, but it gets the freezer full for the year. Look around for someplace to rent the gear if you're too far from Stokes to rent theirs.
I built pasture pens that are sort of half-sized Joel Salatin-style--mine are about 5x12. I have two of them, and the 60 birds fit perfectly. Salatin actually does about 75 in that space, but for me once they get big I think they're a bit too crowded. I move mine usually twice per day around the goat pasture (goats fenced off separately) and it spreads out a lot of manure in a short time, and helps that pasture to continue to improve.
Our goats are for milk, not meat, BTW, and goat milk is fantastic.
