The Rural Voice, 1983-03, Page 12Bringing Home
the Bacon
Following the process of sending a
hog to market, starting with the farmer,
and through the chain of buyers
and processors.
by Rhea Hamilton
Our parents, or more likely. our
grandparents, will remember putting
meat on the table as a very intricate
part of their lives. Raising the livestock.
slaughtering and butchering and the
storing of the finished product. My
father often tells us stories about when
he was a lad and helped whitewash the
smoked hams to keep the flies off the
meat during the summer.
But putting meat on our tables today.
amounts to little more than deciding
which cut to buy at the local supermar-
ket. There's a whole chain of producers,
buyers and sellers before it gets there.
Lets go through the steps. First stop.
to a farrowing operation housing 115
York-Landrace sows, bred for the sole
purpose of raising market hogs.
Ken and Anne Murray, R.R.4 Waiton,
have been in the hog business for the
past six years, quite a change from the
dairy operation they used to operate.
They find the change both interesting
and less time consuming.
The Murrays have seven Hemp. boars
used for breeding and they have calcu-
lated an average of 17 pigs per sow per
year,
The Murrays are raising pigs for the
meat market, not for breeding stock. All
the young stock is shipped thus avoid-
ing the problem of crossbreeding bet-
ween the boars and their offspring.
While Ken Murray has noticed he
doesn't spend as much time in the barn
with the pigs compared to the dairy cat-
tle. he still spends two whole days per
week as well as a few hours every day,
doing the regular cleaning and feeding
chores.
Medication is a concern some con-
sumers raise when they question the
PG. 12 THE RURAL VOICE, MARCH 1983
"Prices used to fluctuate on a daily basis but through the
efforts of the marketing board, a pool price, the average of that
week's prices, are paid to the producer."