help we have a pig!!

[Stonehead]

Our slaughter costs, per pig, are:

Transport to abattoir (120-mile round trip): £17.50
Slaughter (inc inspection, levy, delivery back to us): £63.70
Butchering: £40
Total: £121.20

In other words, that's £2.69 per kilogram without the costs of breeding the pig or finishing it. It adds up.

[oldjerry]

Clare your slaughter cost is pretty low (and the butchery aint bad either).Round here costs are give or take +£5 on both.

Stonehead,what can I say?......Blimey! ..even our dearest place would be about 60% of that.
A couple of years ago,I heard talk of some registered slaughterman setting up a mobile unit in Gloucestershire (dont know if anything came of it) but it sounds like you could do with something similar up your way.
Anyhow hats off to you if you can break even at those rates. Best Wishes.

[Stonehead]

If many customers had their way, we wouldn't break even. I've lost track of the number of times I've been told either:

"You shouldn't be in it for the money."

Or...

"The market decides the price, not you as the producer."

My replies to both the above are better left unsaid!

[red]

we butcher the pigs ourselves - then only have to pay for slaughter.

[devolutionary]

We do our own butchery, too. Had someone come the other day to kill and clean the pig in situ (in the woods) and he charged €40. So your prices are amazing.

[red]

cost us £46.46 to have two pigs killed, de-haired and split. we butcher them from there.


Stoney - your costs are so high! - are there no alternatives?

[Stonehead]

Stoney - your costs are so high! - are there no alternatives?

Yes, I know, we should be more efficient, explore alternatives and cut costs to deliver a price the customer finds acceptable. Something else we get told a lot.

We have the "choice" of three abattoirs. The nearest, a 30-mile round trip, will no longer deliver to small butchers as they're "not profitable" enough, even when both the butcher and the carcass owner pay delivery and handling charges. They're also keen to discourage private slaughter as it's not efficient.

The next nearest abattoir, an 80-mile round trip, doesn't deliver to the butchers we've used. And no, we can't just sling the carcasses in the pick-up. We're selling the meat so it has to be transported in refrigerated vehicles. If we use butchers that the abattoir delivers to, then we're looking at 60-mile round trips to collect the meat, plus transport from the abattoir to the butcher.

The abattoir that we now use is a 120-mile round trip. They can organise a butcher in the same town, minimising transport, and they'll deliver the boxed meat with a refrigerated truck to within 1.5 miles of us. They stop at our feed merchant, we trans-ship the boxed meat to our Land Rover, and I bring it home to store in the freezers.

So, we can't use an alternative, cheaper, closer abattoir as there isn't one.

On the butchering side, we had used our village butcher (£15 a pig) or one in the nearest town to us (£20 a pig). The town butcher died. Our local butcher has stopped butchering private slaughter and is about to retire anyway. We've found another couple of butchers that would do the job, but at £30-35 a pig plus transport costs to and from it's slightly cheaper to use the butcher associated with our abattoir.

Believe me, I have explored the alternatives and this is the most efficient, "cheapest" avenue we have.

It's the same with the other costs. I have several suppliers of straw scattered across the region. At least one usually has a good harvest and so his straw is slightly cheaper than the others. But last year's barley crop was crap and straw is in very short supply. If I can get it, it's £4.50-5.00 for small bales, £35 and up for big. But all my suppliers are short of straw, as are my alternatives, so I'm now using baled wood shavings at £6.50 a pop. How do I get more efficient and cost effective than that?

With the Land Rover loaded with pig feed or towing a loaded livestock trailer—over steep, winding hill roads—it gets 22-24mpg. Fuel prices here have been above £1.40 for some time. I fill the truck with the cheapest I can find without driving miles in search of an elusive bargain, but there's rarely more than a penny difference per litre between outlets. I've not yet found a vehicle capable of hauling 750kg of pig feed, or towing a load livestock trailer, or crossing a field with a load of posts/boulders/weaners while returning better than 25-30mpg so I can hardly get more efficient by switching to something else. I don't fancy putting a livestock trailer behind a 55-60mpg hybrid hatchback.

I suppose I could, as some people tell me, go for economies of scale. I could get a modern lean breed that converts feed more efficiently, I could use sow crates to reduce piglet mortality and up the average number of weaners from 10.5 to 11 or 12, I could push the sows to 2.1 litters per year instead of 1.5, I could bring them inside with computer controlled feeding based on individual pig weight, I could go after the government subsidies and grants, and I could squeeze in a couple of hundred indoor finished pigs on our land. It would get the price down a level customers demand. Heck, I could even more the whole operation offshore to the Ukraine where land and labour is really cheap, send the carcasses to Scotland for processing, and still call it Scottish pork. And I'd probably scrape in under the £3 per kilo that customers want.

It wouldn't exactly be small-scale, outdoor, traditional breed pigs from a local producer, but it would be efficient and cost effective. And I'd have fully explored the alternatives, too.

[red]

why do you spose its so much more expensive in your area than others? or do you think its more down to your mis-fortune in no longer having a nearby abattoir?

it is indeed hard to compete with others if they can get cheaper slaughter/butcher costs.

still you can at least bring pork for your own consumption home whole and cut it yourself.. save a few pennies.

[Stonehead]

why do you spose its so much more expensive in your area than others? or do you think its more down to your mis-fortune in no longer having a nearby abattoir?

it is indeed hard to compete with others if they can get cheaper slaughter/butcher costs.

still you can at least bring pork for your own consumption home whole and cut it yourself.. save a few pennies.

We sell the pork. We can't cut it at home to save a few pennies. There are very specific laws on the cutting and sale of meat. And the authorities do check. We can't cut corners just because customers want to save a few pennies.

[red]

why do you spose its so much more expensive in your area than others? or do you think its more down to your mis-fortune in no longer having a nearby abattoir?

it is indeed hard to compete with others if they can get cheaper slaughter/butcher costs.

still you can at least bring pork for your own consumption home whole and cut it yourself.. save a few pennies.

We sell the pork. We can't cut it at home to save a few pennies. There are very specific laws on the cutting and sale of meat. And the authorities do check. We can't cut corners just because customers want to save a few pennies.

if you read my actual quote above you will see i said

still you can at least bring pork for your own consumption home whole and cut it yourself.. save a few pennies

I know you cant cut and sell the meat.. but you can cut it for your own consumption. so when it comes to feeding your own family, at least you can save some money there.

[Big Al]

My empathies go to you stonehead. I don't do pigs or anything like it but I've got a few hens and a neighbour asked if I had any eggs she could buy as she had forgot to get them from Te$%o. I said I had 6 organic / free range *type* eggs she could have for £1.20

"How much "was the reply, I can get them from TEr^&o for £2.85 for 10. I told her to go to T456o then and shut the door.

She drives a 750 bmw and the nearest T&&o is 5 miles round trip. She gets 12mpg in town and it takes roughly 70 minutes to go to the shop, buy the eggs and come home and yes i did try it,lol.

Intriegued I worked out the cost and asked her later in the week about the eggs.

It cost her £2.49 for the petrol, £1.71 for the same number of eggs and the time to do it all.
Because I have them in my garden she thought I should give them away or at least charge only 10p per egg even though I keep my birds in much better conditions than "proper" free range / organic birds and feed 100% organic grown food which is something other providers don't need to do.

Still you can't help all the people all the time.

We have grown up with cheap food, nay absolutly unethically cheap food and now it is starting to hurt people they winge at the producers like stonhead. I remeber in the 70's, 80's and even into 1993 we never had more than 1 "joint of meat" a week and that made a sunday roast with leftovers for a few days in the week then it was panackalty or veg stews after that.

It's like all the hoo ha of the proposed super dairy with 8000 cows if we want cheap milk we need to have super dairies..... if we don't want them then and the equivilent in other food forms then we need to readjust our demands and support local small indi people like SH...... simples

[clare]

I too empethise with you Stonehead.I am only trying to feed my family with the pig and our chickens and veg patch etc but I beleive you only get what you pay for and I am sure your pork is superior it's shame so many people don't "get it" these days.No one has asked me for free eggs yet ,I sell them at my gate for £1 a box free range and in the school playground to some of the Mum's but a couple have asked the price then never bought any so I suspect they were expecting a freebie but with the cost of grain and jeyes for cleaning out and any powders/sprays(natural of course)they only just pay for themselves with us getting the eggs we need so I am not giving them away!!All the growing/raising your own is hard work and you have to enjoy it but it is worth it in the end......

[Stonehead]

The pigs are worth it. Many of the potential customers, though...

And if that sounds harsh, well, how would you handle getting earfuls of abuse at all hours of the day and night from people convinced that "the customer is king" and I'm only here to serve them on bended knee. If I don't answer the phone at 9.30pm and sweet talk them, I'm a failure. If I don't appreciate being phoned at 6.45am to answer daft questions, I'm a failure. If I don't have weaners on the day they want them, I'm a failure. If I don't have the right sexes, I'm a failure. If I don't have the right numbers, I'm a failure. If I don't sell at rock bottom prices, I'm a failure. If I don't grovel enough, I'm a failure. And if I'm not suitable grateful for their beneficence in deigning to deal with the likes of me, then I'm a failure.

Don't believe me? Ask the Other Half. Or better still, come up and answer my phone/emails/blog comments for a few weeks. There are good people out there, and I enjoy dealing with them, but the "gimme, gimme" consumer disease is virulent, nasty and widespread.

[red]

we sell eggs at the door - £1 for 6

I get harassed for not being in to answer the door. I try to tell them that the thing with having our own chickens, sheep, pigs, ducks, turkeys and growing our own veg.. not to mention home ed, and jobs.. is we are outside a lot of the time!

it's all how it is done - one nice lady left a note asking us to let us know when we might have eggs and be in. mostly for us though, it is a nice community thing.

Most of what we do is just to raise food for my family. i did swap some pork for some beef, and i sell eggs.

i guess if you are in the business of selling, then you have to be prepared to deal with the customers.

[oldjerry]

Stoney ,I'm really surprisedthat 1) people are so rude
and 2)You can put up with it.

I'd have quit long before my health went t-ts up if I'd have had to put up with all that crap.Half our chicken/duck eggs sold at the gate or at school,pub etc.and the sign alwaysn stated the price so whoever didn't like it could do the other thing(only 100-120 doz aweek though) the rest went to local shops.I gave up selling(retail) whole pigs (cept to a few friends) and just sold bacon and sausage again with a clear price.Biggest prob we had was time taken up selling(talking) and as the eggs were alwaysnleft at then gate with an honesty box,if I was near the gate working ,and heard someone coming down the track I'd usually hide!