how to load reluctant pigs & explaining strange USDA butcher rules

hi I'm P and welcome to just few acres farm this morning we brought the last batch of our winter pigs to the butcher and we started out with 18 pigs and we brought them in three batches of six because that's all our small livestock trailer will handle you've seen these pigs since they were piglets last fall on this channel and I'm glad to say that our plan for growing them out in the winter worked great remember we had three points keeping them dry by a good batting and out of the wind here in the barn because there's nothing to forage for outside when the ground is frozen anyway number two giving them a continuous supply of clean water via nipple drinkers on a tank that you see behind me and number three giving them continuous access to clean feed via this rotary feeder that we bought last fall because of these things we were able to grow these pigs out in six months during the cold weather instead of the usual seven months and that should all drop to our bottom line so in this video I'm going to show you how we load pigs because frankly it's never the same twice in a row it's always a challenge much more so than cattle and I'm going to show you how we unload them at our USDA butcher and talk about some of the requirements for unloading pigs and leaving them at a USDA butcher some of them are really kind of odd and I think you'll find it interesting so stay tuned when we started raising pigs seven years ago we used to hire a hall or to come pick them up and bring them to the butcher but it was incredibly stressful on loading day because when the truck backed up we had to get the pigs onto the trailer relatively quickly and pigs are pretty reluctant sometimes when the best investments we ever made was an old horse trailer and we use that to load pigs and cattle now and so how I do it to make it as least stressful as possible is about a week before it's time to load I back the trailer up to the pan and if it's a pasture I back it up to the edge of the pasture I cut a hole in the fence as I've done here put the trailer in open the doors to the trailer and start feeding the pigs out of the trailer so they get comfortable with going into the trailer and I feed them out of the trailer all week long in the afternoon before I'm going to bring them to the butcher I restrict their feed so they get pretty hungry for the next morning when we're going to load them onto the trailer that way when I put the feed out they all rush onto the trailer and usually all I have to do is close the doors and drive the trailer away now as I said we started out with 18 pigs and three weeks ago and six weeks ago we loaded up six pigs each time to take them and those batches were relatively easy because not all the pigs had to get onto the trailer but for this batch we had to make sure we got all the rest of them and I knew it was going to be a chore so a couple days before we put up a cattle panel to restrict the pen to the front third of the pen to kind of limit how much they could travel and hopefully get him onto the trailer easy well loading day came and we had them all up here and I put feet in the trailer and as I said something always gets in the way the pigs didn't want to get on with the trailer so we worked them over into this area with a couple pieces of plywood drove in some fence post and then had them right behind the trailer so that we should more easily push them into the trailer once pigs make up their mind that they don't want to go someplace there's little you can do to change their mind so once you have your first shot and they don't go where you want them to go then you have to come up with alternative solutions these pigs have been different from any other batch that we've raised they were never hand shy I had problems with them nipping at me in the pen I had problems with them biting the hose and things when I would fill up their water typically pigs are a little more timid than that and I knew these Spach was going to be troubled and Load because of that the first batch that we brought the first six pigs we got him on the trailer all right but once we got into the butcher they would not get off the trailer and we tried everything we could to get him off and we wound up having to tie ropes around their front shoulders and pull them off one by one it was an incredibly stressful experience for both the pigs and us and after it we said we're never going to do that again so I talked to her a butcher about what happened trying to get the pigs off the trailer and he said well you need to get a cattle prod and always before I had thought I don't want to use a cattle prod Cal prods or inhumane you know they're stressful on the pig but then I started to think about it more logically after his recommendation and I thought well the pigs were stressed for an extended period of time as we were trying to get them off the trailer with rope harnesses and giving them a shock that's similar to the shock they would get from an electric fence to get them moving along seems like a much more precise and humane way because the duration is very short and they go right off the trailer than dragging them off so we bought a cattle prod and I am so grateful we did now in a pinch like this morning when they're all clustered and they're determined not to go into the trailer we can give them a shock with a cattle prod it gets the lead pigs moving and the other ones follow after you use the cattle prod a few times the pigs learn to recognize the sight of it so all you need to do is touch him with it you don't have to shock them and they'll move along because I was so hesitant to use a cattle prod to move animals I checked into who I view the leading authority isn't that's Temple Grandin to see what she said about the use of cattle prods and she pretty much said exactly the route that we had followed which is cattle prods are a tool of last resort you need to first set up conditions so the animal will want to move and make sure you have all that covered and in the end if you get an animal that's still stubborn you can use a cattle prod too judiciously move them along our butchers a small operation and he takes all the animals that he's going to slaughter for the week on Monday does all of his slaughtering on Monday and then he cuts the rest of the week so we have to have them there by first thing Monday morning and we unload them into numbered pens which need to be filled in a particular order so we were the first ones there and we got the furthest pen in the back one of the Federal Rules for USDA butchers is that you can't leave feed or bedding in the pens to entice the pigs out of the trailer at all is bare concrete you have to get them to come off some other way and there's lots of different methods for doing that there's a swinging gate at the unloading area so you can use that to kind of push the pigs over because there's a big step there pigs hate going up and down steps and it makes unloading their real pain but it's something we've just learned how to deal with and gradually we force them over the step and then it's pretty much easy to get them to walk around and into the pen that they need to go in it went so much better than it does without this thing you don't need to use it very much but when you need it you need it when we got into livestock farming one of the first things we learned about were USDA butcher requirements because frankly it's a mess my feeling is that if we're growing animals and selling the meat directly to the customers that will eat them the government shouldn't get in the middle of that I have liability insurance I'm accountable to the customer I don't need a government stamp on the meat that I sell but we follow the rules and the rules are we can't butcher red meat on premises it has to go to a USDA inspected butcher house now a USDA inspected butcher house means that they have a USDA inspector on the premises looking at the meat and putting a government stamp of approval on it there's actually a beet juice seal that goes on the carcasses and you can see that in some of our cuts that inspectors there when they slaughter it's there when they cut up USDA is a big difference from what's called a custom exempt butcher a custom exempt butcher doesn't have a USDA inspector on premises yes the federal government has to approve the facility or maybe it's the state government I forget which but anyway the facility has to be improved in terms of its setup but the butcher does his work without somebody standing over him the difference is that if you go to a custom exempt butcher you can't sell that meat retail by the cut like we do at farmers market somebody has to buy the meat from you while it's still on the hoof before it goes to the butcher then the butcher butchers are actually for them and they take possession of the meat it's a screwy system and of course if you can go the custom exempt route by selling your meat before it's butchered you'll save a lot of money because custom exempt butchers don't have to pay for a USDA inspector their prices are a lot cheaper there are lots of odd rules about having animals process to the USDA facility most of which I had no idea of until we gradually interacted with which are more the first rule which is kind of the most surprising is that once an animal crosses the property line of the butcher house it becomes the property of the federal government it's no longer your animal so when we load animals off at the butcher they aren't ours anymore they aren't ours again until we pick up the cuts and if the animal you bring doesn't pass inspection for one reason or another it remains the property of the federal government and they dispose of it you can't get it back as far as USDA requirements regarding animals suitable for initial slaughter the only thing I've ever seen is that the animal needs to be able to get on its feet and walk into the butcher floor that's all once we unload animals at the butcher we can't leave any feed or bedding for them the floors all have to be bare concrete I expect for sanitation requirements but it seems a little goofy the butcher does provide water up until slaughter time to keep the animals hydrated after your animal has been slaughtered and the carcasses hanging in the cooler the federal government selects at random carcasses to be tested for antibiotic residue because some people are allergic to antibiotics and their residue they want to make sure that it's not in the meat we've had pigs tested this way before it's not uncommon the implications of it are that your animal gets held up about a week as the test gets sent off to a laboratory and they wait for the results the final requirement is even though the butcher house is independently owned it has an inspector on site that is a federal employee so the butcher house schedule and ours are according to the federal government which means they get all the holidays off all the minor holidays and us farmers are working all of them they get off and if we come between 9:00 and 9:30 or 12:00 and 12:30 they will not do business with us because that is their mandated break time I am always glad to see the last of our pigs go and I am so happy that this pen is now empty and I'll be even happier when the pork comes back and is in our freezers the pork that we've raised this winter will last us through the summer sales season and right now we're getting ready to wean piglets for our summer growing season to sell next winter we'll be raising them out on pasture and I'll show you how we set up the fences and how we take care of pigs on pasture because it's quite different in the winter I hope you've enjoyed this video have a great day it's finally sunny and warm out I'll see you next time

Channel: Just a Few Acres Farm

Views: 120,404

Keywords: small livestock farm, small farm life, farming, farm, homestead, just a few acres farm, how to load pigs, usda butcher rules, taking pigs to butcher, is cattle prod humane, how to use electric cattle prod, tricks for getting pigs on trailer, USDA vs custom exempt butcher, do I need USDA butcher

Id: PExG6C3_o2I

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020