Tag: butchery

Now we split the sternum.

The bone saw is harder than it looks. I took a few passes to help the students out. 

Getting the anus cut out without making a mess is always a challenge. Here we are just being successful. 

The only thing we “wasted” on this pig. We did not clean the intestines and use them for sausage. We did donate the innards to the wildlife on the farm who ate well that night. 

This was a tricky bit because we were dumping the innards while trying to save the liver and kidneys and also the heart and lungs for anatomy class. Success! A clean cavity ready to wash out and then split.

For the cleanup of the hog I tried to do as much as possible except for the scraping. Once we got into butchery I tried to let the students do as much as they wanted. 

Here we are separating the bladder and urethra from the hog. This is a careful process because you don’t want to get peed on at this point. This part was also pretty funny because I was so focused on safety, pictures, overall impact on students, etc. that when asked if this pig was a male or female I answered female while we were cutting off his male bits. Not my smartest moment. 🙂Separating the anus while trying to not get pooped on. This is the delicate bit. Once this is done, it’s pretty easy work.

 Getting ready to gut.

Making the incision.

Miguel and John cleaning up the head while we work on the body.  After burning off all the hair, a thorough rinse down to get everything clean.

Washing everything down.

Having scraped the hog all that we can, we now burn off the remaining hairs. This is quick and easy vs. continuing to scrape.

Getting to workFirst we take off the head. It went to our friend at the Mexican farmers market, who was quite happy to have it for a gift. Not quite so delicate work.The final product, ready to be cleaned up and taken to the market.

 Moving the pig into the shop

Transferring from the tractor to the hoistInside and ready for the next phase

The blood, ready to go into the fridge and keep for blood sausage later in the day.

One Lehman’s scraper, well used. A pure pink pig, ready to move into the shop for the next part.