Can't really help you on this one other then a general rule of 1- 1.5 lbs per person should give you an adequate serving size when cooked. Learned that in culinary school but have never cooked one.

What are you needing them on track for? I have Large Black piglets and they are all over the place for size at 3 weeks. At 9 months they will reach about 250-300 lbs. Breed determines on track for butchering wts. If you have a commercial breed pink porker, you will get there much sooner.

Figured I should give a update, I butchered out a 26 pounds suckling piglet and got 17 pds of human useable parts, plus over 12 pints of pork broth, a pint of render lard plus I was able to use all but 1% in my small farm feeding loops, and that was able to be composted. So that is short of the 70 to 72 percent that some of the books stated.. but I am still pleased at 66 percent, given that everything was pretty much used on farm.

That was useful information. I currently have 15 piglets on the ground and it sounds like butchering some of them young is a viable way to go.

Hi oddDuck,

I would not personally go younger then I did, but for me that nine/ten week range went well, I have plans to do another one at 16 weeks and then go up from there to the correct size.

Now I should let you know I really did do nose to tail cooking, I collected blood and made black pudding, I saved and used, tongue, cheek, lung, heart, kidneys, liver, I broke it down into trotters, front leg/shoulders, neck and rib cage and back put did pull the tenderlions (that were no bigger then rabbit ones), plus two back legs minus the trotters, I cooked them and used the first as pulled meat, enough to serve four or five as pulled meat, I cured the belly flaps as bacon, it won't make a slice but will certainly make bacon bits, I am curing one of the back legs as a mini-ham.

I wanted to try this in a number of different ways, so I eat fresh killed, butchered and wrapped and into the coals, it was good but fairly blan, it developed better flavour after sitting overnight, then I cold storaged the rest, did a shoulder after one day of "hanging time" and it was good, waited another day and did the ribs/back etc, excellent, last shoulder still in cold storage temps, going to give it another day and do it then, Bacon was not ready yesterday when I checked it and the ham won't be till early next week, then I am going to smoke it and will report back on how it turned out.

I would not say that you could really get typical cuts or even chops easily at this age but for fresh meat in the house and for soups, stews, mini-roasts or pulled pork, works just fine, I also cut up a a bit of meat/bone and put one pint in with the broth in the pressure canner, but I have not opened it and tried it at this time but I am interested in how the meat comes out.

Let me know how it goes for you, I don't know if the pig type or raising conditions will make any difference or not, mine are large black, with limted free range and are on a mix of green fodder, sprouted grains and hay..

Opps, almost forgot, I did a couple different things with the skin, I was trying things as I figured if something went really wrong, it was not near as much meat being lost, so I did use the dunk (boiling water and scrape on some) but I also gave the fire a good try and it worked surprisingly well, don't use a proper fire, it will work but its much harder to control, a good bed of coals was the better choice but it did the job well at a few second count to take the hair off and maybe another second or two to be able to scrape the hide part..

I also skinned a fair amount of the body, as what I had planned did not require rind on things and what I did then was singe the hair off, do the scrape on the back side, flipped it over and took off as many bits of meat as I could, then chilled it, cubed it up and put it in the crock pot to render out, it was a bit more smelly then doing the same with a boiled and scraped peice but not by much and it did the job, Once I had my first render down, I strained it and then did it a bit longer, I wanted to get the meat bits out as I feel they effect the flavour if allowed to stay in and burn..

I don't think I really lost much lard doing it this way but let me know what you decide and how it goes.

Thanks Farmgal, The more detail the better. That was actually a bigger ham then I would have thought for a 26 lb piglet. Went out to the barn to have another look. I have 3 smaller piglets from a first time litter that won't make wt. by 16 weeks, but they are good candidates for early processing to save feed costs.

I have Large Blacks as well. Judging from my previous litters, 16 weeks will make for a pretty good sized piglet. I also, do head to tail. I have plenty of leaf lard saved up for cooking and can now start making soap with the back fat if I ever get a minute.

I really don't understand why no one wants a nice smoked hock, but they don't, so I make lots of hock and pea/bean/lentil soup which cans up well. I also pickle the trotters. Its an aquired taste, but waste not want not. Looking forward to the next report.