[HeronsReach]

My pigs will be ready for slaughter in a month, and I wondering what price I can charge for a half a pig???

[Malc]

How long is a piece of string? A lot seems to depend where you are in the country - the further south you go the higher the price - we're in Orkney!. I always reckon to get the best part of £300 from each pig (£150 for half, obviously) - that's somewhere in the region of £2-£2.50 per lb which I reckon is an absolute bargain. If you tally up the cost of feed, straw, electric, transport, slaughter costs and butchery, there's little left for you.

Please, please, please don't undersell it. Rare breed, humanely-reared pork is a premium product and should be priced and sold as such.

Hope this helps and you get a decent return.

[HeronsReach]

Blooming heck thats amazing. I thought £80 a half was around about right, but then again I havent worked out my feed costs yet! I've been quoted £22 for slaughter and dressing, £40 for jointing and £55 to vac pac (not sure if thats the going rate?) But your quite right it would be a shame to under sell after all the work i've put in. Thanks

[supplies for smallholders]

Hi,

When we are in the position of not selling them all as weaners and get to grow some ourselves we charge £160 per full pig and £90 per half pig. (at around 60 - 70 KG)

It all depends on where you are and what the locals will pay (unless you get into mail-order). Where we are, people are not so much bothered about "Rare Breed" but they do like the Humanely reared "Happy" pork. so we can't charge a premium - even though they are pedigree saddleback and white lop.

Slaughter and Jointing seems about right - but this again often varies with weight and what you want (ie. Joints or sausages / mince etc). The Vac Pac seems quite high - I know vac pac keeps better in the freezer, but its eating into any small profit if you do sell - probably even take you into a loss if you tot up all the costs.

If customers are buying "off-Farm" do they expect the same over-packaging as you find in a supermarket ?, as long as it is bagged and labelled I think they will be happy.

Finally, ask your customers what joint sizes they would like - dont give them a leg that would feed 20 people if its for a family of 2 - all helps customer satisfaction and repeat business.

Thats all from me.

Gareth
www.suppliesforsmallholders.co.uk

[Malc]

£160!!!!! For a whole pig?!!! I get more than that from the butcher.

Wherever you get your feed from, Gareth, I want their number right now!

Seriously, if you can make it work on that figure, fair play to you, but I suspect you're subsidising the production. You say the slaughter, butchery and packing costs Heronsreach quote are about right (£117). that leaves £43 to feed a pig up to around 75-85 kilos liveweight, plus the cost of electricity, bedding, water, transport and some left over to cover feed for the sows - not to mention a bit of cash for yourself (looking after pigs properly is hard work and the farmer deserves a little reward).

I'm not trying to be confrontational, but I just don't see how it adds up.

I've asked three other breeders here in the north of Scotland (all regular producers of pork pigs rather than hobby farmers) and none of us can get the bill for feeding a pig up to slaughter below £75. Slaughter at our abattoir is £32, so we're up to £107 (minimum) already. Add £80-90 for butchery and packing. A large round bale of straw is £18 (and likely to go up this year). Each of our sows eat the best part of a £6.50 bag of nuts every week. Then there's electric fencing, lighting and heat lamps for the piglets. Arcs or timber for houseing needs to be bought. Farm buildings and fencing need maintainence which is far from cheap in terms of cash and time.

People here in Orkney couldn't give two hoots what breed their pork is, but they know good quality when they taste it and they understand that low intensity farming costs more - they've been producing cattle and sheep that way for centuries. I have no trouble selling pork at around £2.50/lb and, again, I'll stress that I believe this is a bargain price for a quality product.
 
I'm thrilled to bits that pig-keeping has become so popular, but there is a minority of us (a tiny minority if recent reports about GOS ownership are anything to go by) who have to make it work financially.

It may seem that selling low intensity/free-range pork at about £1.20/lb does no harm - after all, it's just once in a while - but if farmers and crofters like myself are forced to drop our prices to a level where we actually lose money, we'll have to get out and the supermarkets and intensive units will have won.

I hope this doesn't come over as a rant, it's not meant to and I've nothing against Gareth at all, but I'm just a little worried.

[AWP]

Hi Malc, I totaly agree with you , If people keep selling pork so cheap the likes of the proper pig farmer/crofter will go out of business. What sort of price can you obtain from the butcher? per kg. 

[sausagesandcash]

Over in Ireland deadweight for factory farmed pork is approx €1.40 per kg.

We charge €350 per full pig butchered, and €175 per half.....and that's an awful lot less than the the factory farmed GM rubbish in the butchers.

Even at that it's hard to make any real profit. Our best source of income is pedigree weaners.

[Hilarysmum]

On a website here (Brittany) rare breed free range pork was being advertised at 3.50 euros per kilo.  Now I cant produce the pork for that.  Even then people complain its too expensive when the supermarket promo offers it at 2 euros a kilo.   

[supplies for smallholders]

Hi,

Wow ! Sorry, not trying to undercut anybody or anything.....

We only sell as pork to our local regular customers, usually we sell as weaners to people who want to fatten their own.

We feed a mixture of Local Rolled oats and barley together with pig nuts, and as we are agents for BOCM Pauls we get our feed at trade prices.

Slaughtering and butchery (at around 60 - 70 KG) comes in at around £50.

The straw is our own - so very little cost there.

So basically we find that at £160 per pig we can make a very slight profit.

It very much depends on area and what price you can command - if we charged £350 per pig around our area, we would sell none at all, I would love to be able to sell at that, but the fact is that they would not sell!

Thanks

[dixie]

I sell my GOS outdoor reared, free range, lovingly spoilt with belly rubs and ear scratches pork for £6.50kg butchered, bagged and labelled. Not a huge profit but its a hobby that pays for itself so I'm happy! I feel its a fair price

[Malc]

That's a relief, I was beginning to think it was just me.

Gareth, as I said before, if you can make it work, then fair play to you and I admire you for making a profit on those figures, but you must admit you are in a privileged position as feed agents (that explains a lot) and I also think you are leaving some costs out of your calculations or pushing them onto other parts of your business which then distorts the true cost of producing a pig.

The bottom line is that rare breed and free range producers up and down the country are charging almost twice what you are (more in the far south) and have little trouble selling. Orkney folk are as canny as any and I have a (admittedly small) waiting list of orders for pigs. They don't seem to mind waiting or paying for quality. I think you underestimate Lincolnshire people.

Research into food labelling published recently (I forget by who, but I'll look it up if you want) showed that an increasing number of people were concerned to know where their meat came from and under what conditions (strangely, they weren't so bothered about other food) and that many understood that it costs extra to produce 'traditional' meat as opposed to intensively-farmed.

My advice to anyone new to selling is to take a trip to Tesco, Sainsburys or Waitrose and make a note of the price of their quality range pork (Taste the Difference and so on), then do a web search for rare breed pork and work it out from there.

I promise I'll shut up now.

[HeronsReach]

What have I started here

Update

I called a butcher who offered me £2.40 a kilo, which I was happy with, but then I got to thinking!! Carefull now

I was in Tescos and was actually checking  the price of the food. Normally we just shoval the stuff in the trolley and grit your teeth when you come to pay. I looked at the price of ham and was amazed to see the price of 100g of ham for £2.49! Thats £24.90 a kilo for intensivley reared, pulped up, cooked SQUARE ham!!

And when people phone me up and ask me the price of half a pig and I say £110... I get mmmm thanks very much Ill let you know

And on top of that Ive just had a fencing bill for a £1000

Go figure...cos i cant

[Hilarysmum]

Herons reach its the same here, we now sell mostly to French who do appreciate the quality.  Its quite normal here for people to spend 80-100 euros on a bag of dog food, or one lady who only buys organic feed for her horses, yet they are happy to stuff their freezers full of 2 euro a kilo promo (imagine where it comes from) pork full of antibiotics and other nasties.  Why do people not respect their own bodies more, or at least their growing children's bodies.

[spursman]

The last lot of pork we sold worked out at around £6.50 a Kilo but I sold it in packs with a value of £30.00 per pack and everyone has asked for more in the future. We only sold Sausage separately and this proved to be the largest profit maker. Personally I would not sell half a pig under £150.00 or I would be out of pocket.

[sausagesandcash]

What did you put in the £30 packs? i.e what cuts

Morgan