125. Hogtied

My host family has been talking for a while about purchasing a large hog and butchering it ourselves.  It is not out of the ordinary for a family to butcher their own animals, even larger animals like hogs.

My host sibling visited for the weekend so my host dad, host brother and I Sunday morning went out to fish for a while and then bring a pig back to the house from a local farm.  I was excited to help; I have butchered a hog before and have raised them as well.  I really like working with and raising pigs.

We fished for a while, caught about four carp in four hours.  The day was beautiful but they fish were not biting.  After that we went to the nearby farm and picked out a hog from a group of 20 or so… and that is when the fun began.

I was confused how we would get the pig home, even at this point.  I soon found out that the plan was to hogtie the pig and then put him in tractor’s bed.  As with anything dealing with pigs, it takes longer than it should.  They choose one hog fairly quickly but it took a while to catch it.  They first tried to tie a rope around a leg, but he was too quick and always shook it off.  They then put a noose around its nose and drug him out of the pen.  At this point we tied him up and the four of us lifted him into the tractor.  I rode in the tractor’s bed to make such it did not hurt himself by flailing around, so at times I was almost laying on him.

When we got back to the house we got him on the ground and cut the ropes to let him walk to his pen.  I was a little worried about him because we moved him in the middle of the day (around 85 degrees outside), the whole process took 90 minutes or more, and he was under a lot of stress.  These are all important because hogs cannot sweat, so they can die due to overheating.  That is why hogs wallow in water, so they can stay cool.  The stress the hog was under will also affect the meat, so it is good that my host family did not butcher the hog that night because the meat would not have been as good as it could be.

One of the best things that happened, beside me being able to work with pigs again, is that my host mom said something like, “Let Tim move it into the pen, he knows how to work with hogs.”  I really enjoyed the comment because generally when it comes to gardening, animals, or things around the house I do not really know much or they do not think I do.  So it was cool that she knew that I knew what I was doing, due to my stories of raising pigs in high school and helping at my uncle at his farm.