[The Woodsiders]

Hi can anyone let me know what sort of price I could expect to get from a butcher for whole pigs delivered to him direct from slaughter, Our pigs are British saddlebacks, we have just started to use this new butcher to joint our carcasses and he said he would be very interested in buying from us, we normally just have split pigs back from the abattoir.
Would be grateful for your input.

[robert waddell]

you are competting on price with his present supplier    who is paying the slaughter charge you or the butcher  commercial pigs are about £1.40 a kilo     but depends if yours are pedigree free range and if he wants flyer's with your holding on it and if he can get a premium for it from his customers but you cant be to greedy
has he indicated any price

[The Woodsiders]

Hi Robert, we will pay the slaughter cost,ours are pedigree free range born and bred outdoors, he says that he buys pedigree meat from another customer and will offer me around £2.34 a kilo, our dead weight carcass normally comes back at around 62kilos, his offer would not cover my costs, he is selling in the window for £9.50 a kilo.

[JulieS]

£2.34 isn't a bad price marcott.  You might be able to get him up a little bit, but if he's paying that to someone else then he'll probably not want to pay any more to you.

With the cost of feed at the price it is then that price would certainly not cover your costs though. 

[Polished Arrow]

This makes me question whether there is a pedigree pork marketing body.  We too will have British Saddleback pork for sale in the next few months, and are trying to balance value for money for the buyer alongside at least breaking even for ourselves... 

[The Woodsiders]

Thanks for your response, I think we will give the butcher a miss as we can get far more selling the meat ourselves locally, we do not want to be greedy but like us all just want a fair return for our laboursa, but hey ho we live to breed some more.

Polished Arrow, you may be better off selling meat prvately.

Thanksa again

[robert waddell]

there was talk of the bpa  doing just this  but again it depends on  the price that they are paying  also depends on carcase weights  that is why we try for 120 kilo liveweight  you are getting just under the 100 kilos  you are getting a reasonable return for your input
we tried the butcher route years ago  a waste of time to fat to thin to big to small FFS look at the price your charging your customers  and you are arguing over Penny's per kilo
the QMS demo we were at i asked what weight the pig was that he was cutting up i also asked what he payed for it   now bearing in mind they can cut a pig up in 20 minutes that pig doubles in value in that 20 minutes   fair enough he has expenc es and overheads    then you have to gear up to supply that butcher  2 pigs a week or whatever then he phones and says no i just need one this week or none
it is a difficult one spend on cutting /butchering plant spend on butcher doing it if you can get one get your traders licence and sell in the markets  but you still have your supply over/under  take two pigs sold out before lunch or take four and left with two 

[hughesy]

If you sell to a butcher he's making the profit, you've done all the work. Also they mostly don't understand the traditional breeds they want stuff just like the supermarkets sell.

[SmallTimeSmallholder]

Hi all,
I'm not trying to pretend that I'm any kind of an expert but thought I would just share my experience with you.
Our first lot if pigs went early February. We only keep 4 at a time, so it's not on the same kind of scale as most of you. We offer our pork out at £6 per kg if you want 1/2 a pig. After that all cuts are individually priced from £6.50 per kg for mince to £15. per kg tenderloin.
We sold almost all our pork the day it arrived back from the butcher.
I cannot believe he's offered you such a low price for your meat!!! 
Our second lot of pigs are ready to go at the end of next month and we have sold all of them as half pigs (one whole one to the local pub- we can't believe our luck!)
Good luck with yours!