Hi I’m Mike, here on the ranch cows are our main source of income, but we couldn’t
do this without diversifying.
We also raise our own steers and pigs for direct sale to customers at farmers market.
These are the honest facts of raising pigs for profit, on our Wyoming life.
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the ranch life and escape the ordinary.
The question was raised to me recently if raising your own animals and sending them
to slaughter gets any easier as the years go by.
The quick answer to that question is no, but the real answer is a bit more complicated.
Neither Erin or I were raised on the ranch or on any ranch for that matter.
We came here a few years ago when Erin’s step dad started getting sick and he has since
passed away.
We came here from a life in corporate America, about as far from agriculture as you could
get.
When we came we had no idea what we were getting into, sometimes we still don’t but we have
since settled into our new life.
We have started a family, we’ve had 3 kids, Mackenzie who is 7, Grace who is 4 and Lincoln
who is 2.
And we have changed how things are done around here, when we came it was strictly a cow and
calf operation.
Since then, Erin has added gardens and actively sells vegetables raised here on the ranch
year-round, we also raise and finish our own beef that we sell and pigs as well.
By the end of this video you will know more about how we raise our pigs, how much they
cost us to raise and how much profit there can be in pork.
So today we get to talk about pigs and there are three sides to this equation, production
yield and sales.
Back in July of last year we brought a new batch of pigs onto the ranch.
Each and every year we get our pigs from the same place.
A young lady that grows her pigs in Nebraska.
We have purchased our pigs from her for years because we want to stay consistent with our
customers, changing breeders each year could change the flavor of the pork and we want
our customers to be confident in knowing they are going to get what they expect.
This year we purchased 7 pigs, one of them we had presold before we even got them and
the others will be sold to our local customers.
We pay 50$ per pig and so starts their time on the ranch.
The piglets now weigh about 10 lbs each and will live here in the pig shed for a majority
of their lives.
We have two stalls available to them, and they will be able to move from stall to stall
when then get bigger, allowing us to lock them in one side of the pens while we clean
the other.
Which happens often, pigs need to be cleaned frequently their stalls mucked out and bedding
replaced.
These pigs will live on the ranch for an average of 200 days, gaining weight at about a pound
and a half per day.
By the end of the 200 days we are hoping for pigs that weight between 270 and 310 pounds.
Just like people different pigs have different metabolism and some will gain weight faster
and some will be slower.
To help them gain that weight we need to feed them, obviously, and we do so by buying pig
food by the ton.
Each bag of food weighs 50 lbs and a ton has 42 bags on it.
A pig will eat about 4% of its body weight in food per day, these little guys will eat
less and a half a pound per day but that will quickly change.
As they grow they eat more and over their entire time here on the ranch each pig will
consume about 800 lbs of pig food, for all seven of them totaling 5600 lbs of food or
about 3 tons.
More than the weight of an average car.
We buy our pig food at a cost of $13.70 per bag or rate of 28 cents per pound.
Over its lifetime each pig will eat 225$ worth of feed.
All together we have 1575$ in feed in the entire group.
Pigs drink water too, however I have never figured out how much it costs pump water for
them at the rate of 3-5 gallons per day per pig.
Another cost that I haven’t figured as well is my time that I have into the pigs.
Each day we spend at least an hour dealing with them, somedays more, somedays less.
From feeding, watering and cleaning stalls, even entire days, rebuilding stalls or chutes.
Over all this time spent with our animals you do get attached to them, you learn their
quirks, you get to know their personalities, which makes the day that they leave the ranch
that much harder.
This year we are taking our pigs to Sturgis Meats.
A USDA inspected meat processesing and packaging facility.
Here we can get our pork packaged for sale to our customers.
We offer our pork to customers at farmers markets and by direct sales.
Being usda inspected means that we can sell our pork by the single piece, one pound of
bacon, or a single pork chop.
Just like the grocery store.
With the pigs dropped off, we can go back to that question from the beginning, if raising
your own animals and sending them to slaughter gets any easier as the years go by?
This is our 3rd year raising pigs, and the day anyone animal leaves the ranch is hard
for me.
You see the hard work that you have completed take another set toward completion and as
hard as it is, I know that as we move forward from here, I am providing for my family, the
ranch and our future here.
2 weeks later we are ready to pick up our pork, Before leaving we do a bit of housekeeping,
cleaning out freezers and making sure we have room for the many pounds of new meat we have
coming in.
The timing works out right, because we are on our way back over to Sturgis with a load
of steers that we will be processing into beef for sale as well.
But first we must have our brand inspection, where a state representative comes out to
the ranch and inspects the cattle we are taking.
After checking the brands and proof of ownership, we can head out with them, driving the hundred
or so miles to drop these guys off and pick up our pork.
Loading it all in the back of the truck, then high tailing it back home before things start
to thaw.
Once back home, we disconnect the trailer and over to the shop we go to start unloading
pork.
On average a pig will yield about 57% their live weight in pork.
A 250 lb pig will bring you 144lbs in retail cuts.
All together we brought over 2150 pound of live pig, we are taking home 1225 lbs.
We don’t get too crazy with our cuts and for those interested here are the numbers.
350 Pork Chops 70 Pork Shoulder Roasts
126 pounds of Sausage 250 pounds of bacon
And 300 pounds of ham We also set aside a half of an entire pig
for our farm to table dinner in late summer.
Our cost for processing our pork including butchering, processing, inspections, vacuum
packaging and curing averages 400$ per pig for a total of 2800$
Our total cost for 7 pigs this year was 4725$.
Now comes the third part of the equation: Sales
We sell our pork at farmers markets and direct to our customers.
When it comes to pricing our meat we do it in two ways.
One is by the individual cut and the other is in 35 pound packages.
In a 35 pound package you get 8 pounds of pork chops, 6 pounds of sausage, 5 pounds
of bacon, 8 pounds of roasts and 8 pounds of ham for $199.
That is an average of 5.69 per pound.
If we sold all of our meat at that rate, lets say we only sold packages then we would have
an income of $6970.25.
With a cost of $4725 giving a profit of 2245.25 for six months of work.
You might think we could actually make money on pork is with individual sales, people that
buy 1 or 2 pork chops, a pound of bacon or sausage.
We price our individual cuts comparable with the grocery store, our customers know that
they can buy pork in the grocery store for close to the same price but what they don’t
know is how that pork is raised, what hormones or antibiotics might have been used or the
condition that they lived in.
Lets take a look at those numbers.
Bacon we sell for 9.50 per pound we have 250 pounds to sell, that’s $2375
Shoulder roast is 4.99 per pound, with roughly 210 lbs we have $1048
Ham is 5.99 per pound and 300lbs give us $1797 Sausage at 6.50 per pound is $1365
And pork chops at 5.99 per pound brings about $2096
And if we sold all of our pork individually, that gives us a grand total of $8681
Take off our cost of $4725 again and the profit is now $3956
$3956 profit with individual cuts and $2245 with packages.
Our actual profit is somewhere in the middle.
It may not seem like a lot, and we are really only talking 7 pigs here but for us it can
make a big difference.
That money can be used to help further advancements in the garden, or it might help buy Mackenzie’s
braces.
Its another one of those things on the ranch, that if we don’t figure in our time and
our labor we actually do pretty well.
When we first came to the ranch, one of the first things Gilbert taught me is that your
time isn’t worth anything.
How right he was.
So the original question once again…
Does raising your own animals and sending them to slaughter gets any easier as the years
go by?
The answer doesn’t change I guess, its still no.
These animals are a part of the ranch and every year we see many of them go away, but
their sacrifice is never in vain.
By raising animals to see we are ensuring that the ranch continues every year, and hopefully
long enough to see our kids raise their kids on this very same land.
Maybe they will be doing the same things we do today, maybe they won’t.
The whole place could be a wind farm by then and you know what, that’s totally fine.
If it keeps the ranch going we will do it, this land is one of the most important things
in all of our lives.
And every day we make sacrifices ourselves to make sure that its still going to be a
part of our lives tomorrow, including making choices that are very hard and sometimes heartbreaking.
I hope you have enjoyed this little economics lesson, mixed with the why and the how.
When we started our channel, we decided we wanted to not only bring you what we do, but
also why we do it and the emotion involved in every step.
Make sure you subscribe for more from the ranch as we explore the ranch life together
and escape the ordinary.
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