The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: sc12011 on December 04, 2012, 09:27:20 pm
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Ive recently had 2 pigs back from the butcher, but i didnt get back the amount I was expecting...
They were 8 month old OSB's. Two knowledgeable people (one a farmer & butcher- (not mine), and the other a pig farmer) saw them just before they went to the abbatoir and both said they would expect about 70kg+ of meat off each one. I got about 50kg each.
I spoke to their breeder today and she said yes there would have been about 70kg, and that they definately kept some of my meat. This is apparenly very common! And this is a large, well known butcher. She said she has seen them do it with her own eyes before which is why they take theirs away and butcher them themselves now.
Does anyone else have any experience of this?. I spent this morning fuming that they had the cheek to do this as it is blatant theft, but i know theres nothing i can do about it even if it is true.
(i am in suffolk, by the way incase anyone knows who im talking about... :( )
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So sorry to hear this - after all the care and hard work too.
Is it possible to identify the cuts you got back and attempt to schematically assemble the carcus? Sure sausage meat will account for some meat and fat but if you have missing meat then this will be evident. Sureley we are talking about theft here.
It strikes me that butchers asking for a cutting list are maybe doing so because, in part, they want to assess the pig owners knowledge of the range and number of cuts. Sure the cutting list will allow good butchers to cut and prepare to the customers needs. But if for example the owner does not ask for the tenderloins then they won't get any back. The butcher can always say that they put missing cuts into the sausage. So maybe it is a total weight argument that you need to present.
Again - so sorry to hear your news.
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we butcher our own but when we used a butcher, we asked for the fat/scraps back as the pigs were overweight, we got 14kg of fat from one pigs...oops. if you havent got the head, trotters etc they weigh a fair bit when you add it up. plus offal.
can you not weigh the meat, then find out the liveweight and deadweight from the abattoir?
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We have had that done to us in the past. We certainly didnt get back all the meat off two pigs, although at the time we didn't do anything about it, because we felt we didn't have sufficient evidence.
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. if you havent got the head, trotters etc they weigh a fair bit when you add it up. plus offal.
can you not weigh the meat, then find out the liveweight and deadweight from the abattoir?
i agree with cleopatra its surprising how much weight you lose with the head trotters etc and this might be i generally send my porkers at six months and i get aprox 40kg of joints back per pig and sausages on top of that approx 15kg, you will also find that if your pigs were fatty they will have cut away a lot of the fat which obviously weighs a lot, check the lady who told you they had taken meat from her doesn't have an axe to grind or a personal issue with that butcher it does happen!
Mandy :pig:
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yes 70Kg of meat sounded massive to me - so glad Mandy who has vastly greater experience than me said that. We've had 4 enormous saddlebacks go now and have got around 40-50Kg plus sausages back and all expected cuts seemed present (plus I really trust our butcher). We didnt have ofal, head or excess fat back. I guess the only way to be sure next time is to do 1 self butchery? Good luck fi xx
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I keep no livestock but I often wonder myself if you get it all back or Even get yours back!!!!It is theft but how can you tell they have kept some unless you are at their side!!!!
Hope you sort things out...I would be fuming too!!
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The only way to be sure is to get your carcass back whole or maybe just split or cut into primals at the most. Think about it though if you get back 70kg of boned out meat from a pig it would have had to be probably 150kg ish live weight, or a 70 kg carcass still on the bone with head etc would have been 100kg live weight.
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True about the difference between live weight and carcass weight (with head and offal) then the difference between carcass alone with no head or offal. Finally the difference between carcass weight and all cuts plus sausage and trimmings.
We will be slaughtering our 2 in a couple of weeks and I will butcher again. last year we weighed all that we put in the freezer but this year I will be making a comprehensive list so that I can understand the relative weights of cuts/offal/sausage and waste.
Not sure how I can accurately measure the live (dead weight) but the plan is that I jump on the scales whilst trying to stand with half a carcass ( not an easy task - maybe I should quarter it first) and balancing a pigs head somehow.
Last year I could not get through the front door with half a pig over my shoulder and needed to return it to the hook and quarter it ( what fun for the watching neighbours).
I'll post pig weights with the list of cuts etc when all done.( I will also record time on task).
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True about the difference between live weight and carcass weight (with head and offal) then the difference between carcass alone with no head or offal. Finally the difference between carcass weight and all cuts plus sausage and trimmings.
We will be slaughtering our 2 in a couple of weeks and I will butcher again. last year we weighed all that we put in the freezer but this year I will be making a comprehensive list so that I can understand the relative weights of cuts/offal/sausage and waste.
Not sure how I can accurately measure the live (dead weight) but the plan is that I jump on the scales whilst trying to stand with half a carcass ( not an easy task - maybe I should quarter it first) and balancing a pigs head somehow.
Last year I could not get through the front door with half a pig over my shoulder and needed to return it to the hook and quarter it ( what fun for the watching neighbours).
I'll post pig weights with the list of cuts etc when all done.( I will also record time on task).
would it not be easier to ask slughterhouse/butcher to weigh it when you go and collect if there are no DW on our carcase we always ask them to weigh they are more than happy to do it for us.
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Not really as we home kill and there is no way I am going to put our bathroom scales in the pig run in this weather and put a just killed pig on my shoulder. :o ;D
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what was the backfat? this should be on the label put on the carcus by the abattoir.
a pig i have sent in a 19mm back fat have had no more that half a cup of trimmings discarded with basic butchery by myself. 55kg live. 40kg meat
a previous pig which had 35mm backfat had 14kg of fat cut off, which was a black sack full. this carcus was
professionally cut into sausages/chops/mince etc by a butcher.85kg liveweight. 50kg meat.
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I think it would be exceptionally unlikely that any 8 month old OSBs would have weighed 150 kg liveweight, even if they were very very fat. But that is approx. what they would have had to be to expect 70 kg meat back. The average ratios that everyone works to is 0.72 between live and dead weight, then 0.7 between dead weight and butchered cuts, which comes to about half the original live weight. Perhaps whoever it was meant they would be 70 kg deadweight, if so, 50 kg of butchered meat would be just right. I certainly wouldn't have expected more than 60 kg maximum from an 8 month old OSB pig. Could you not get a slaughter report from your abbatoir to find out what the dead weights were? Our slaughterhouse is very happy to provide them. Tamsaddle
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I keep no livestock but I often wonder myself if you get it all back or Even get yours back!!!!It is theft but how can you tell they have kept some unless you are at their side!!!!
Hope you sort things out...I would be fuming too!!
You have to get yours back - regs and all that.
It helps that often smallholder animals are not 'commercial' and as such aren't what the butchers would want anyway.
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It helps that often smallholder animals are not 'commercial' and as such aren't what the butchers would want anyway.
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definitely agree.
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Yes, an 8 month old OSB would probably be too fatty for the butcher to sell. I know our abattoir/ butcher isn't really interested in selling most rare breed meats and they often comment on how overly fatty they are. Just a note to what the others said, unless you kept yours exceptionally lean then you may would have lost extra weight from the fat being stripped down pre sausage prep. I'm in Suffolk too - did you go to the big place?
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Tamsdale - thanks for posting the ratios - I'll see how near I get to these when I home kill and butcher.
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I've heard claims of butchers holding back meat for themselves and found it hard to believe however not something we have ever experienced as have always just butchered ourselves i do hope you're wrong about your butcher :)
Our last two killed out at 60 and 64 kilos at 6 months pretty much what we expected :thumbsup:
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We have ours just cut up into basic joints plus a bag of trimmings for sausages and do the rest of the cutting ourselves. We can jigsw ours together and see that we always get the right quantity back. Plus, if you slap mark on shoulder and backside you will know the pigs are yours.(and so will the butcher)
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it is not unknown for butchers to slip the odd bit to one side and its not always to put through their shops they know as well as we all know RB pork has taste it end up on their plates.
a friend of ours once sent off some saddlebacks on their return they were pleased they killed out so well until they looked closer not only had theirs been killed and cut they had their hair dyed too they had someones tammies, i bet the other owners were not so impressed with kill out weights or black hairs.
we used to slap all 4 quaters until one on the back side hit a nerve and sent the pig lame so we are very carful now as to where it lands on the rear.
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As far as we know we got back what we expected but how do you get the liver. never had this from the lambs either.
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We didn't get our lamb's liver back until nearly a month after they had gone - and then only after we phoned and asked. The possibilities of these being our lambs livers?! :thinking: Oh well. They're frozen too so now so I'm not even sure if we can defrost them enough to cut them up and then freeze them again. We certainly cant eat the lot in one go!
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bow saw.... ;)
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If you have your pig butchered and give the butcher a list of what you want, but maybe due to forgetfullness or lack of knowledge don't ask for a particulat item, will you get that part? For example if you have the leg done for roasting joint and the loin for chops and steaks, what's going to happen to the chump and the fillet? We always get ours back just split into halves and butcher ourselves but it strikes me that a butcher could easily forget to put such things into your box and a lot of people wouldn't notice.
I'd recommend going on a pork butchery course of some kind even if you don't intend to actually do any cutting yourself, just to get the knowledge.
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As far as we know we got back what we expected but how do you get the liver. never had this from the lambs either.
You have to ask for the "pluck", better to tell them when you are actually booking the pigs in. It is unlikely that you get your own pluck (tongue, heart, lungs and liver), but then we have always been ok to get any back. Needs to be collected on the day of killing as you want it fresh. Unlikley that the abattoir will be prepared to freeze it for you.
When we used our local (now shut down) abattoir I normally would go back at lunchtime to collect, now that we have a long drive the new abattoir have been very helpful and we can bring our pigs in later in the morning when they have already started to kill, so we get a pluck back. It's always flash-fried liver for tea on these days! Our dog loves the lungs.
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Well our 3 OSB went off a few weeks ago at 8 months. They weighed 69.8, 78.2 and 88.2kg and abattoir gave us the tags back. We definitely got around that amount back although I wanted heads etc for dogs but they mysteriously got taken by inspector! More likely sold on.
We tape measured before so we had a rough idea on weight and as they charge extra over 70kg as hair has to be removed one at a time in machine you would know if bigger. Ours weren't at all fat and tasted fab
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Well our 3 OSB went off a few weeks ago at 8 months. They weighed 69.8, 78.2 and 88.2kg and abattoir gave us the tags back. We definitely got around that amount back although I wanted heads etc for dogs but they mysteriously got taken by inspector! More likely sold
if anything is rejected/taken by inspectors you should be either given a report (sometimes emailed direct to you) or be shown a report on collection of your meat.
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Well our 3 OSB went off a few weeks ago at 8 months. They weighed 69.8, 78.2 and 88.2kg and abattoir gave us the tags back. We definitely got around that amount back although I wanted heads etc for dogs but they mysteriously got taken by inspector! More likely sold
heads can be removed at abattoir or butchers. all my dogs eat them, they are fairly heavy too,, mind you our wee dog broke his canine tooth, presumably on all the bones they get.
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mrs snoodles - Yes i went to the big place.
The pigs were about 90 something kg each and 51 and 52kg off each one, but i told them i didnt want heads (asked for cheeks), trotters or any organs, so would this make up the extra weight that my breeder was talking about? She said she thought they would have weighed more than 90kg live, but if they were 90, then she would have expected about 60kg of meat...but i suppose if you count the extra bits that i didnt want, then it would add up to the 60kg... ???
they had 21 and 23mm of fat, but they did look fairly lean actually before the went (to my unexperienced eye!) although the pigs themselves were massive :)
The meat is lovely though :)
its all very confusing
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A 90 kg liveweight pig should give you 90 x 0.72 = 65 kg deadweight pig. This would have no "organs", other than the kidney (approx 100 g), as the pluck is not included in this weight, and all the guts have been taken out by the time you get to the dead weight. The head, trotters and tail weigh between 5 -6 kg so you are now left with 59 kg. By the time the rest of the carcase is butchered, with some of the joints boned out and flare fat removed, you could easily be down to 51 or 52 kgs. We do all our own butchery and usually get another 5 - 6 kgs of waste per pig in addition to the head/trotter waste. I always weigh all our meat, mince and waste so I can add it all back together again at the end to see how close we are to the official deadweight, usually within 500 g. Tamsaddle
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I have heard so many bad things about that place. a friend is currently in dispute with them over her sheep. She is an extremely experienced keeper and is certain she has not got her carcasses back. Another friend knows the family personally and has done for many years and sends his own sheep to Norwich instead. When I recently asked them for slaughter prices on my suckling pigs and for sows I found out that that had quoted a hell of alot more than what someone else had advised me that they paid.
We went to look at the abattoir, but didn't actually visit in the end. We had stopped off to buy some overalls on the industrial estate and could hear the animals sounding very distressed. We didn't go any further. I have also been told that they gas pigs which I think is being banned in a few years time.
Norwich, Blakes? Is meant to be good. We go to Ruse in Long Melford. expensive but very good on all accounts.