[suzi]

I’ve been told by the abattoir that my pigs are hanging weight 116kg, 78kg,75kg, 58kg, 55kg and 50kg
The 3 biggest are very fatty so being made solely into sausages.
The other 3 I’ve reared since 8 weeks or so. So sent at the right time (other than the littlest. He kept escaping so hot added to the send list for my sanity and the fact I couldn’t get him separated from the others in time).
I’m worrying about freezer space.
I have 3 chest freezers (not huge but not small once).
I’ve also sent 4 very large lambs off. I have a 6ft draw freezer I’m hoping they’ll fit in

It’s the first time I’ve sent anything off. I’m panicking I won’t have enough space!

Am I over reacting ?

[Penninehillbilly]

without knowing cubic freezer space, and what joints you are getting, hard to tell, but it does sound a lot of meat.
You could try bottling some?

[chrismahon]

Aside from the size issue, freezers are only capable of a limited amount in 24 hours. If you put too much in you will defrost anything else in there which will then need to be eaten immediately, because it can't be re-frozen. A normal freezing rate would be 20kg in 24 hours maximum.


To speed up the freezing rate (and dramatically reduce your electricity consumption) you can put a fan to blow air across the heat exchanger elements, because the loss of heat from them is the limiting factor.


Are they all arriving at the same time?

[Richmond]

Is this all meat for the family? Or are you selling some? That's a lot of meat. Best get advertising some meat boxes 

[PipKelpy]

Also depends if you have anything else in your freezer. In 2010 I sent off a 29 month old Brown Swiss Bullock, plan was for him to go into my large chest freezer, not quite the size of the ones at Iceland, but big. A week before he was due back, BIL looked and said, "I don't think it's big enough!" Tesco direct had a nice upright, so that was ordered, as was the electrician to put in another socket AND fit a heavy duty cable direct from the fuse box (cable still there but now it also runs into its own fuse box!).

BIL was right. Swissy filled my big empty chest freezer, my new upright, squeezed some into another upright, some into the kitchen fridge freezer, had a good feed of beef that night and the rest went into the fridge where for about 3 days we ate beef and not much else!

Mary (cow) is only small so her offspring are smaller and we put one in the freezer last year, she filled it, 18month AAx, in the big chest freezer (3/4 chest freezer got lambs in it and both uprights were full.)