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looking to see if anyone knows what the local farmers are selling a whole hanging pig for price per pound?

We are selling ours this year for $200 per half plus processing. By the time we bought the piglets and feed them out we are not selling for much more than our costs.

I will also mention that our price i:ncludes delivery to the butcher - we take them all to the same place.

how much do you think your pigs weigh at $200 a half?

We are hoping at around 250lbs per pig but won't know until they go in for processing.

250lbs live weight?

Yes live weight

Holly smokes I guess it has been a couple years for a pig and prices have jumped. For a frozen gutted pig it was $200 we got for a pig roast.

Swiff said "looking to see if anyone knows what the local farmers are selling a whole hanging pig for price per pound? "

I am selling pork for $1.40 per lb hanging weight.

Question from a person who doesn't know much about pigs or buying pork. You said you are selling hanging pork for $1.40 per lb, which sounds reasonable to me. What I'm curious about is do you have a cost per lb for processing, I know that if a person is getting bacon, or hams cured, the price will be higher, but a ballpark figure would be nice.  
We sell beef privately and found out the more the customer knows the better it is for everyone, and a happy customer is usually a return customer.

This is my first year selling pigs.The halves are averaging between 80 to 90 lbs.You are right depending on bacon and ham the processing charges vary.Ballpark for a half would be $110 processing fee.

I think if people have a few numbers, they can realize that eating meat can be affordable, even more so with pork than with beef, the dollars for beef seem excessive given the size of the carcass.  
Good luck with your sales, like I said, your prices seem very reasonable given the price charged in the stores.

Curious how you keep your feed costs down?

we sell both  
$1.50/lb live weight for pigs - pasture raised Berkshire and Berk crosses...usually 250 lb pig  
 
Holstein steers - also pasture raised with some barley in the winter. $2/lb live weight.  
 
GordPaddock - what type of pigs are you selling for that price?  
 
I don't think some farmers charge enough...we haven't raised our prices in 3 years and I think you (Gord) aren't charging enough if you have pasture pigs.  
 
Ours are outside all year round & have pasture & bush to live in (& a barn to go in if they choose)  
 
Luvmygirl, yes you need to charge more as well!  
 
Same goes for eggs...people say they can get them cheaper at Walmart...well that's not comparing the same thing!  
 
Lots of local farmers raising quality meat for a decent price...non farm people need to realize it's better meat than what you'll get at a grocery store.

talked to an abattoir and there selling cut and wrapped pork for $1.89 a pound

if I sold for a 1.40 a pound I would lose money with feeding costs, I found two places in Manitoba on internet one close to Brandon and other by Winnipeg, the one close to Winnipeg is selling 3.50 a pound hanging weight and the one close to Brandon is 2.50 a pound hanging weight they are both organic Berkshire farmers, So I'm thinking at 1.80 or 1.90 a pound hanging weight it would be a good price for regular pork

An abattoir usual buys their pork from someone who raises animals in large quantities. The place that butchers ours gets theirs from a Hutterite colony. To buy a weanling is $100 before I even start. Right now I am going through a bag of feed per day at $12 a day. I don't have access to grain, have no bins for storage or large grass filled pastures for them to run in. So for us in order to make it pay we need to charge $400 per animal live. We only sell 3 of our 5. This year I tracked all expenses and we are making a little over $50 profit per pig for my time. I doubt next year we will do 5 as it's more work than it pays.  
 
As for eggs! Yep agree as I sell those too. At $3 a doz I had no customers. At $2.50 I am good. I do not deliver though. I cannot see how anyone can offer that service with only charging so little

When I read the original post I thought of the decline that pig prices have taken in the last six months, and since then have read all the comments about covering costs, and turning a profit. The reality of the meat industry, and I guess any business that is private sector is there is no guarantee of covering costs or turning a profit. We live in a world of competition in the private sector, and unless you have a way of protecting yourself you will face the reality of price swings. If I look at the cattle industry, there was a statement made that anyone who has fed cattle in the last year has not turned a profit, and most animals are worth considerably less without even factoring in feed cost. The price of $1.89 a lb cut and wrapped shows the price that hogs are actually worth. If a person can find a niche market that can work well for a producer, but sometimes the dollar value of a product is the major selling point.  
 
Hope people aren't ticked off by the above comment, but this is the reality of the private sector.

For us we don't care one way or the other if we sell our 3 extra or not. We would just keep it for ourselves. We sold 2 quickly (1 to a family member and 1 to a friend) and the 3rd took a bit of time. We do it just to provide ourselves with meat in the freezer that actually has some taste to it. We also raise chickens for meat once a year. We don't even buy beef anymore as the prices in the stores are high and quality is low.  
 
If only we had room we would raise our own beef as well.

As I stated earlier this is my first time raising pigs.I believe I got a good deal and paid $50 for 20 approxiamately 50 lb weanlings.They have been outdoors since March,at first in cattle shed,then on grass and then I gave them an acre of corn.At the same time they were eating lightweight barley and oats that I had on hand.It certainly would be less profitable to buy $80 to $100 pigs and buy prepared feed.(white pigs york cross).I also sell beef and chickens privately and do agree that animals raised outdoors naturally are worth more money.Next year my pork price will be higher.  
Thanks for the input.

I'm sending you a message.

Where do you draw the line? Lovemygirl needs 400 to cover costs where GordPaddock only needs half that. I am all about buying local but if local is double the price I cannot support that. Because of having to buy bagged food vs grain fed etc, how does one justify paying the higher price? Lovemygirl would be further ahead buying off of someone like Gord and would have saved hundreds of dollars in the long run.

For us it's about growing our own food, knowing what goes into it, knowing the conditions the animal was raised in, loving the animal - happy animals make better tasting meat! It's about teaching our child work ethic and where their food comes from. It's about making a little extra to cover our costs.  
 
Luckily not everyone thinks "bigger is better" as with that mentality the small guys might as well just quit and let everything be mass produced for cheap and if that was the case I would just buy the tasteless junk they sell in the store.  
 
I would love to have bins full of grain we grew ourselves, pastures big enough to let them gorge themselves with fresh green grass. We asked the neighbor to buy some land or even rent and he wasn't interested. So we fill our freezer with pork and chickens and our fridge with eggs. Sell to a few others who appreciate our investment. I wish someone would sell me piglets for $50! But it is almost impossible to find that in May.

I enjoy when we get topics like this, if nothing else it allows people to become a bit educated on buying products from local producers, and maybe also on some of the different products available when just talking if something like pork. When it comes to pork I don't care if it is factory pork, farm raised, or even organic, and there are differences.  
When it comes to how much a person is willing to pay for a product, the answer to that question is whatever you are comfortable with. All a person has to do is look at cars, the purpose of a car is to get on from point A to point B, and yet there are cars in all different prices.  
I do sort of take exception to the comment about the quality of meat in supermarkets because I know that everyone from large feedlots right down to producers who have only a few animals sell animals to the lege packing house, and the beef you eat may have come from a producer who hand feeds his aminals every day until ready for market, there will even be the odd organic animal that goes through those doors.

My son bought and raised some pigs to help fund his college expenses. He put up an ad and has little interest. Is this what the other producers are finding too?

Is always lower than spring...if they are finished and ready to butcher you should be able to sell them as butchered.  
 
A lot of people have bought some sows & a boar and now the market is flooded. We can usually sell all our weanlings in the spring but our second farrowing is always slow. We keep them over and sell them as butchered halves.

Try posting on the Facebook pages. We had no problem selling our few we did to friends and family. We did ours a month ago already so maybe it's just getting late in the season and people have Christmas on their minds so don't buy?

People who buy weinlings in the spring are selling them now and the market is well serviced. We have put ads on FB but only have a couple orders.