The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: peteinwilts on February 17, 2011, 01:18:40 pm
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Hi Guys
I am the proud owner of saddlebacks and we are nearing the time to slaughter.
Do you have any recomended thoughts on how much i should sell for? I presume £x per Kg for 1/4's and 1/2's.
If I had it properly butchered (have had a quote of £30 per pig... is this the norm?), I run into the risk of charging different prices per cut.. then I will be completely lost!
Any tips or recomendations for a newbie would be greatly welcomed
Many thanks
Pete
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Pete,
Presume this is a few to family and friends
People have little idea what a 1/4 or 1/2 pig is in terms of size (and cost), and if you sell the parts, then most will opt for pork leg and chops, leaving shoulders and belly which whilst delicious will quickly fill your freezer, and yes you have to start charging differential prices.
One good way to sell is "Pork selection Boxes" which will contain chops, sausages and joints
You can then price these - so say they have the option of a £30 box, a £45 box or a £60 box - of course they can but more than one box if they want more!
You can then decide how much per kg to charge. I normally start with a quick troll round Tesco to get an idea of what a supermarket price is, and then decide how much more than this I want to price at. This will depend on how desperate you are to get the first sales (once people have tried price tends to become unimportant - they normally snap your hands off for the second lot). A reasonable premium should be charged, taking into account your costs, and you can find anything from a few % above to twice or three times - look at river cottage prices if you want to shock yourself!
Once you collect, you can then sort into the boxes, small joints for aunt sally who is just her and hubby and more chops and sausages, and Billy's large family can have that large leg joint. Fred family live on sausages, so a few more for them.
Don't forget to have a box for yourself !
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yes do not sell youself short as oaklands says trawl the suppermarkets and internet(some of them charge from £500- £1000 and not even pedigree or pure)
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Have a trawl around the internet to see what others charge for half a pig in your area - prices can differ greatly depending on geography and breed, and what's included can differ quite a bit, too. Make sure you cover you all costs (and get plenty of free pork yourself! ;)). Presumably you're selling to family and friends?
:wave:
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thanks Guys
Yes, family, friends and work people. We sold the three we slaughtered last September in 12-15Kg boxes and charged a flat £50. I share the pigs with my sister in law, who set the price and sold them before I had a chance to step in... I think we seriously undersold and is no wonder they went like hot cakes. (She has been told off and is listening now! :-\ )
I once read that sausages taste better from pigs over a year old. I have purposefully run three on for sausages. they are currently 11 months old and enormous! they have been kept in a Damson orchard which was overgrown with brambles. They have done a good job with clearing it and just the trees and woody stems remain. It will be interesting to see if the flavour is different to those kept in the fields..
The seven smaller pigs are only just coming up to 6 months (this weekend). Three are going for slaughter for meat. Out of the remaining four, we will breed from the two best and as they are pedigree, have options whether to sell as weaners or grow on for meat and sausages.
Good plan or hopelessly ridiculous!?!
Thanks
Pete
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I would say DON'T undercharge as its really difficult to convince people to pay more next time even w hen every thing else has gone up in price. (Smallholders dont need to pay health charges, community tax or put diesel in their cars and of course they live on what they produce and work for love, to them money is irrelevant .......).
Go on to JImmy's Farm site and print out the charges on there and give one to every prospective purchaser, then point out that your meat is a) local; b) pure bred.
You should value your pigs enough to charge a reasonable price. Otherwise although you will sell everything you will be subsidising the consumer.
(Sorry bad day)
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Another tip is to not let people choose what they get in their box or else all the good cuts go and you're left with the less choice ones. I do a taster box for £40 they get a leg joint, a shoulder joint, a belly, 1/2 dozen chops and a couple of packs of sausages. They normally then progress onto a 1/4 or a 1/2 box. If they don't want these sizes i suggest they share it with somebody and that usually does the trick. I aim on getting £7/kg minimum for my pork and just a say break even at that and this doesn't include paying me for my time (i do it lurve! :love:) Ha.
HTH
Mandy
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you include sausages.... do you use older pigs, or do you just make them from the younger pigs regardless?
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Welcome peteinwilts. As said your too cheap, so up it!!!!!!!!
Someones in Taunton is after a whole pig, so you might make a good sale here(before 25 Feb), so don't delay!!!!!
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This was our first year of selling any of our pork to our friends (family obviously got it free fo heloing so much with the farm!) We charged £85 for half a pig but found out/were told that we were under charging so the last 3 halves were £110 a go. People in my area sell halves for anything ranging from £110 - £140 but when it's friend I always feel bad chargin too much (one of the may reasons my smallholding will always be a hobby rather than a business!) ;D
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We charged £60 for a 1/4 of a pig, nobody batted an eyelid at that, so I guess that was either cheap or about right, they were just basic cuts as they were butchered at the slaughter house (our butcher was on hols), as for the cost of butchering our 2 cost £74 to slaughter and butcher and we are in Oxfordshire so a similar area to you. These were our first pigs so we kept it simple to start off!
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I prefer the idea of selling in 1/4's and 1/2's, but charging by the Kg. This will mean if for whatever reason we want to keep the pigs for longer than 6 months, the price will reflect the extra food put into them..
We slaughtered our first 3 at 6 months and the abatoir cut them into peices into boxes of quarters. The quarters sized range from 11.5Kg to just under 16Kg. A flat rate would just not be fair for those that have the smaller quarters.
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we charged 120 for 1/2 pig
the slaughter butcher 'evened out' the boxes and shared liver etc
everyone was happy for that
we kept alf for ourselves and swapped 1/2 for a lamb
mx
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just wondering - if you were selling a box of various cuts of meat - from a customers point of view, would offering a beef box and a pork box be better or worse than offering a "pork and beef" box. has anyone tried this?
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manian : how much did your boxes weigh?
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We sell half pigs for £175 (not butchered), a nearby petting zoo / family farm sells them for £205 (butchered, but smaller than ours), but we're in the Home Counties with field rental to pay etc. Prices differ greatly depending on location.
If you make sausages or bacon, the meat will go much further.
:wave:
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We sell half pigs for £175 (not butchered), a nearby petting zoo / family farm sells them for £205 (butchered, but smaller than ours), but we're in the Home Counties with field rental to pay etc. Prices differ greatly depending on location.
If you make sausages or bacon, the meat will go much further.
:wave:
Hi Eve
How big are your halves?
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Never weighed them myself, but was told by the abbatoir that they're about 85-90kgs each. No wonder we felt as if our legs were being flattened whenever the not-so-little-anymore darlings sat on our lap! :D
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eve that is some size thats about 250k liveweight or 120k if that is the weight of the two sides do you get them back with the skins on or off
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at 6 months old, ours are about 1.2m (length) x 1m (girth)... that is roughly about 80oddKg liveweight, 58Kg deadweight per pig...
Eve: how old\big are your pigs when they go on 'holiday'?
I have had some massive variations in prices across the forums (obviously this is the best! ;D) and am after as much detail as possible to make a decision (Monday!)
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So can anyone tell me what the butcher actually would sell a half/whole a pig for??????
I would be interested to see if you would still be cheaper at the top price quoted. ;D
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Dont know what the butcher sells a side for but he charges around a $1.20-$1.50 to butcher and pack it up
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:pig:were just about to buy 1/2 pig butchered from friends £70 middle whites home reared good size
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forgot to mention its from wales
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:pig:were just about to buy 1/2 pig butchered from friends £70 middle whites home reared good size
unless it is a piglet, that is a very good friend you have!
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And that what friend are for hey pete ;D!!!!!!!
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Whoops, sorry Pete, that's their size when they're whole, not halves! :-[
Oh dear... :-[
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Hi there.
I am new here so forgive my early rant...................HOWEVER...................some peeps seriously do massively under price their produce! Its a fact!
If you take the time to research what your meat may be worth, make sure you compare like with like. By that I mean animals that have been reared with care and attention, no expense spared on the welfare, feeding, vetinary care, etc, then start factoring in the time, transportation costs, advertising costs, and then count to ten............take a deep breath and ask yourself how much is that Rare Breed animal worth to you? How much would that butcher charge his punters for some its pork? Most importantly do you want to 'sell it' or 'give it away', thus harming all other breeders and their already pitifull margins!
This is not in anyway meant to be an attack on anyone, but looking around in internet land there do seem to be some 'desperados' keen to unload what should be a premium product at ridiculously low prices.
Our pedigree pork sells for £175 per half pig, sausages at £8.50 a kilo. Bacon, all cuts at £16 per kilo, I am certainly not being greedy either. The thing to remember is NEVER under value your hard work and love of your stock!
Worthy of note, once you factor in all the little things you always see fit to forget in your costings............at the prices I charge........... we still.........'aint getting ritch'.
I hope my rants help ;D
Regards
Jason
www.hairyhogs.co.uk (http://www.hairyhogs.co.uk)
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I do agree BUT here in Brittany where the £ has dropped considerably against the euro, its very, very hard to convince expats of the value of real free range, nearly organic pork at between 7 and 12 euros per kilo when they can pay 2 euros a kilo for (albeit revolting cardboard tastless) pork on promo at the supermarket. I rant all the time about underpricing but its hard to stick to your prices with 3 freezers full of unsold pork and a dozen porkers waiting to go. (This is not my position at present but certainly is for a lot of other pork producers locally).
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Hi again.
Sadly I take your point entirely. BUT, if anyone is in that position regarding stock coming out of their ears.............seriously, stop breeding till you can catch up, its not rocket science is it? At the end of the day to sell at a loss is insane, and if you have to do that get out of pigs before you catch a real cold?
I HOPE I never have too, but I fully appreciate it COULD happen, I would pack it in if it didnt pay and sadly thats how it would end.
If everyone charges a sensible price and gives nowt away however it becomes a far more valuable product (as it should be anyway), and punters become conditioned to paying the right price...........Come on everyone believe in your produce!
This is how we box and market ours, please tell me it looks worth the money, everyone has re-ordered!
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/jasonbirdman/IMG_7984.jpg)
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/jasonbirdman/IMG_7977.jpg)
By the way, I am not trying to bellitle anyones efforts in any way, I truly do believe 'Pigs Are Worth It'!
Regards
Jason
www/hairyhogs.co.uk :farmer:
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Love the presentation. Little touches count for so much - particularly with first-time customers.
Forgot to say, I charge £120 a half, £65 a quarter; £6 per kg for joints/chops. Have just started doing bacon at £15 per kg and that's going well.
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I do same as Jason & agree with Tudful, nicely presented box, its amazing what you can knock up on microsoft word and my customers get a piggy newsletter telling all about whats been happening between batches of pork, encouraging them to see their pork on the trotter and come to see us at local shows. I think it does make a difference.
Mandy :pig:
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We didn't have pigs last year 'cos of the house move but we'd like to get some this year, if we get the fencing sorted.
I knocked up a wee spreadsheet; to keep 4 weaners from 8 weeks old for 6 months, to transport them for slaughter, have them butchered and packed (but not processed), it will cost me £1150 roughly.
If they kill at 90kg LW, with a 70% KO%, I have to get £5 per kg to break even, and the head, trotters etc are essentially worthless. And that's not including any allowance for capital costs or my time. From a 90kg pig, how much saleable pork do you actually get?
The butcher charges £1 / kg to cut and bone, pack and label. Processing is obviously extra, but it looks like the added cost is well offset by the added value.
We keep a few pigs mainly to give us one for the freezer, and the others as company for "our" pig, and I expect to "pay" the right price for a premium product. Nevertheless, I don't want to give the "extra" pigs away so am keen to price it realistically.
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My sister in law just spoke to Gribbles Butchers who will sell 25 kilo half side of Glos Old Spot at £90 special offer
Reared outdoors maturing slowly over 20 - 28 weeks. Their food is based on natural ingredients with no added promoters.
at £3.60 a Kg, it does not make life easy for us on a small scale :'(
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Forgive me, and my foreign tongue..............'bloody hell thats way too cheap'! Thats what will be the kiss of death on the rare breeds, Tesco style pricing or G.O.S being used as a massive 'loss leader'! Sad!
Jason
www.hairyhogs.co.uk (http://www.hairyhogs.co.uk)
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yes but is it GOS or did it just say hello in the passing waitrose tried that urine before and were caught out
i will come back on pricing but it will not be to next wk
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I am pricing up tonight!
Thank you all for your help on the subject. I will not aim too low, but I am also not having a fancy presentation box (maybe one day!)
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Can someone tell me how much saleable pork you get from a carcase %age wise?
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My planning spreadsheet has the following calculations in it:
56% meat from kill weight split as follows:
ham 24%
belly 19%
loins 18%
fore/shoulder 9%
shoulder 8%
misc 22%
Total 100%
i.e. for a 90lb pig you get ~50lb of meat split
ham 12 lb
belly 9.5lb
loins 9lb
fore/shoulder 4.5lb
shoulder 4lb
misc 11lb
Although I have no idea now where the original data for that lot came from.
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90 lb...........thats a small pig ?
65 to 70n kilo would be our 'norm'?
Interesting break down though........................ :farmer:
Jas.
www.hairyhogs.co.uk (http://www.hairyhogs.co.uk)
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Jason, that box looks great, well done!
Benkt presumably means kilo's ;) the figures look about right. Anybody who knows what the 'meat percentages' are for the different rare breeds?
Rosemary, we had roughly the same costs for 5 pigs (kept for only 4 months). We sell them at £175 per half, unbutchered. As long as we have to pay for field rental, we'll never make more than some pocket money (but lots of free pork :D) out of it. :(
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Eve, that may well be kilos I meant - among other helpful details the old spreadsheet I grabbed it from is missing units ::)
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Anybody who knows what the 'meat percentages' are for the different rare breeds?
Eve - great question, as it gets to the heart of the difference between forumulas and guidleines.
In the really commercial indoor world, a pig producer needs consistency is his product - every finished pig should be the same as far as possible. To achieve this you need to control 3 factors, source, input and output. Source means the breeding of sows and boars that are as perfectly close to each other as possible - ie every sow they buy from specialist supplier of breeding stock (and there are several in the UK) should be the same. Specialist breeders work very hard to achieve this. Their customers don't want sows where one produces long pigs (lots of chops) and next door produces chunky pigs (lots of ham), they want every pig to be the same so if they want long pigs, every pig they buy should produce long pigs. Second input - feed in commercial units is very tightly controlled, both in quantity and formulation, and changed at every stage of growth to be the optimum for the pigs. Finally output - what energy the pig expends. This covers movement and energy needed to keep warm. Hence indoor units are temperature controlled and the amount space enough that the pigs move (meat = muscle so if you don't work muscles they don't grow), but not too much that they burn off and waste energy.
Now in this indoor world, you can talk of formulas as the final product is so tightly controlled, and indeed adjusted to get to the perfect answer.
Contrast that with us rarebreed lot – On source - there is lots of different bloodlines, and lots more variation as these are intermixed, hence why most litters only have a few that conform to standard. Within any typical litter you will see long piglets and chunky piglets, these will produce different meat ratios – if you want bacon you choose a long pig, as that’s where the bacon comes from.
On input – most people keep theirs outside where they pick up nutrition from the environment as well as what we feed, and most of us don’t weigh the feed and ensure every pig has the same. Many have varied and wonderful diets which will affect bone growth (size), muscle and fat.
On output, our outdoor pigs will need to expend energy to keep warm, and energy to forage.
Now since all three of these factors contribute to the amount of meat in which areas of the pig, it is not possible to produce formulas for different breeds, at best you can get an average – a guideline. So just as you can say that the average white british male is somewhere around say 5foot10, it doesn’t mean my child won’t be a Tom cruise or dragon Peter Jones (5’7 and 6’7” respectively).
Now having said all that some races do have traits – eg Chinese will tend to be smaller, African Americans are more likely to play basketball as height is needed. But just look around at your family to see how much variation there is within the broad trends.
Switch that to pigs, and yes some breeds tend to be longer, some tend to have larger hams, but not consistently enough to give % formulas on eating, as which piglet you choose from the litter, what you feed it, and environment play far larger parts in the finished product.
This is why the “which breed is best” question asked on all forums every month is really irrelevant, and why I say go for what you like the look of!
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Whatever you decide dont forget although some fat is good for taste, too much fat is a waste of money. (Says she who has Hilary and Digby ;D ;D)
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That's very interesting, indeed, Oaklandspigs, thankyou very much! :bouquet:
The lifestyle of our pigs is of the eat-a-lot-run-a-lot variety. ;) Maybe I should find some exercises (yoga for pigs?) to stretch their bellies - the bacon is just divine! ;D :yum:
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Really interesting thread all thanks. I'm in the process of working out how many of my recent litters to keep and grow on so all this input is really helpful.
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Can someone tell me how much saleable pork you get from a carcase %age wise?
If you know your live weight of your porker or finisher then multiply it by 0.68 and that will give you your dress weight. Head off of course.
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It works .... ;D ;D ;D
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Hi - I am new to this forum and have just sold my first pork from my herd of Gloucester Old Spots. I sold three half pigs and had one made up into sausages and half for myself. I love the presentation of the pork boxes. Can you please let me know where you can get these boxes for the meat, as it looks so much better than ordinary cardboard boxes. Many thanks Teresa