So we have out first 4 Large Blacks back from the abattoir, and are quite pleased. They were 30 weeks, and have just over a cm of fat - our butcher said they would be a little too fat for most of his customers, but he thought they looked ideal.
As you know we deliberated at length over what to charge, and got lots of advice from people on here, which at times confused us more as people had very different ideas, but in the end we have decided the easiest way is to charge them on the weight on the abattoir tag, so we are going to charge £4.50/kg on that weight, but the pigs will then be butchered to their specification included in that price. So it will work out a bit more than that per kg to the customer, but exactly what will depend on what they have done to their piggie. As they are already weighed, it seems the most straightforward way to do it just now, we'll try it this time and see.
This will make us a small profit on each pig, although if I counted in my time, it probably would leave us breaking even. However, as I mainly have the children with me when doing piggy stuff, I don't mind not counting the time, if that makes sense.
Getting to this point has been quite scary, just so relieved they are not hugely fat! We have been weighing them and condition scoring, but as they are our first pigs, we didn't have anything to compare them with, so are looking forward to the next batch, if they ever arrive - Delilah is now a week overdue!
Topic: pig/pork update (Read 1922 times)
