[Dave Taylor]

Hi everyone,

We are looking at venturing into keeping pigs for meat. In the long run we are hoping to set up a small holding as a business. Pigs are the animal we would like to start with, before expanding further.

We have acres of land which is all bramble, gorse etc (north Wales). Our idea is, is to start with a few weaners and grow them on, and eventually sell their meat. We are hoping to do this a few times before we decide to breed our own.

However, as we are on the isle of anglesey, in a very off the beaten track location setting up a farm shop is not really viable at this stage. (It is a long term plan).

We have heard of people selling meat online and either delivering it personally, or through couriers, does anybody have any experience of doing this, and if so do you have your own websites or do you sell through some sort of online market?

If anybody has any advice or experience, good or bad it would be great to hear from you.

Also any questions please do ask

Dave
 

[shygirl]

check out local competition first

[waterbuffalofarmer]

We used to sell our products through farmers markets, festivals, supply shops and through our website too. You need a product which really stands out and people will really take notice of it, for example stress on how they're reared compared to other pork? Try and make something unique out of it which not a lot of people are doing. Just a thought. I hope this helps and please do keep us updated on how you get on? All the best

[Marches Farmer]

Do you have a local inn or restaurant that would be interested in locally produced native breed pork?

[greenbeast]

We sell online, but i think most of our sales come from word of mouth currently (having the local vet as your partner helps!!)

[Dave Taylor]

Thanks for your comments everyone, we do have a bar/reasturant which my girlfriends parents own, and the pigs will actually be going on their personal land, which meets the boundary for the bar land as well so that should work well, as they will take meat from us.

I agree we will have to market it as well as something so different from the norm, I will keep the forum updated anyway with how we get on, as we are hoping to get our first few fairly soon

[hughesy]

check out local competition first

Surely local competition is irrelevant if you're selling online?

[hughesy]

Do you have a local inn or restaurant that would be interested in locally produced native breed pork?

You will need to have an incredibly tight reign on your costs if you're going to avoid the situation where you do the work and someone else takes the profit. Very difficult to make pigs pay by selling wholesale.

[farmers wife]

there is very little margin on pork.  Better raising it for your own table. 


The other option is to sausage the majority and cook them on a stall/pub bbq that is the only way to make money on small scale pork.


Personally, I would raise a few first, gauge the quality and size of joints, work out your USP and see if its worth the bother. Breeds vary and you've got to get the fat right!!!! Because the margin is so small, time you start spending time packaging it and organising courier, setting up a website with Paypal etc it wont make any money.  Not forgetting finding a stock trailer, driving to the abattoir, finding a top notch butcher (very rare) labelling, having a home chiller etc. Unless you are thinking of making this into an enterprise I would just raise the pigs for your table and sell some to friends and family.  Have some fun making sausages and have a go at bacon etc.

[farmers wife]

Do you have a local inn or restaurant that would be interested in locally produced native breed pork?

Never cost effective unless the restaurant is of high class as most buy from food service companies that sell it incredibly cheap.  Pub/Rest are looking for continual regular supplies all the same size and only pick the best cuts from experience leave this to the bigger boys.  Alternatively, make fantastic sausages and sell that way but again you'll never make much money for the effort.

[Dave Taylor]

We sell online, but i think most of our sales come from word of mouth currently (having the local vet as your partner helps!!)

Thanks for the reply, what licensing do you have to sell online, such as what requirements do you need for where you store the meat that you sell?

Thanks a lot
Dave

[Dave Taylor]

Thanks for everyones replies!

We will be definately going ahead and getting a couple of weaners (breed undecided) relatively soon, and rearing pork for our own table, like many of you have said we need to find a good fat balance and make sure we can rear a good meat before we even think about competing in any market.

If anyone else has any suggestions/ideas/negatives we may not have thought about, please do get in touch! Very excited to rear our first pigs.

Our next major issues are making sure we can have our pigs sent to a local small abattoir, and getting our fencing sorted

Thanks
Dave

[greenbeast]

Speak to your local EH officer, they're usually pretty helpful. They'll tell you what you need.
We're just handling packed meats so we needed a reasonable fridge/freezer, a temperature logging device and that's pretty much it.

As for waiting about, and testing with 2 weaners... we bought the land in march, sold our first meat in august and turned over £4k over the christmas period... ha ha