We’ve had folks wondering about acquiring pigs. These are fantastic homestead hogs. They can handle winter without extraordinary help. They will grow well on forage and scraps. They get fat. Very fat. If you are a paleo eater or Weston A. Price adherent, these are a great source of meat and fats. If you like pork loin because it’s a nice lean cut of meat, you need to know that Mangalitsa is prized for its inches of fat and the marbling in the meat.
We can not legally sell live hogs in Michigan. We can sell live hogs to out-of-state buyers.
We don’t know yet if we’ll have a USDA processor this fall. We have a USDA custom exempt inspected shop (they look at the facility but do not inspect individual animals; we are essentially processing your animal for you) on the farm, which means that you can buy a half or whole hog and we can process it for you.
It’s getting close to fall and we have lots of porkers. Here’s the skinny on the fat hogs:
1) Weaner pigs: These are pigs that are just weaned from their mothers. We have castrated males, intact males, and females. Castrated males are $175 each, $50 deposit. Breeding stock are $500 each, $200 deposit.
Delivery: We will be making a few trips to deliver weaners. We can arrange stops if we can drop enough pigs to make it work for us both. We will be going to Seven Sons Farm in northern Indiana in September. The cost of delivery will depend on the number of pigs being carried.
2) Feeder pigs: These guys are about 150 pounds and could be fed out, ready for the butcher by early to mid winter. They can be yours for $500.
Delivery is same as for weaner pigs.
3) Butcher hogs: These pigs will be ready late fall. We process pigs in a seasonal cycle, and late fall–after acorn time and good cold weather–is the season for butchering hogs. We don’t know if we will have a USDA processor yet, so right now we can only sell them as custom processed hogs, meaning that you purchase a whole or half hog and we process it on-farm. (The hog never leaves the farm, s
o there aren’t any heightened concerns about Michigan’s natural resources being endangered and we should be OK.) $3.50/pound of hanging weight, plus processing ($0.45-$1.00 depending on how you want it done). $200 deposit.