The pigs are five months old in a couple of days and in theory, in a month’s time they could be off to the abattoir!!! We decided we should see how heavy they are now (using the measuring method described back on the 10th…). Because one of them has always been much bigber than the other, the obvious question has always been, is this one (pictured) big for its age or is the other one ‘small’ for its age!! Our measurements gave us weights of 57kg and 85kg: assuming it's correct (and the method we used is meant to be pretty accurate), that’s quite a difference in size. And to answer our own question, we think the bigger one is indeed big for its age, but equally the smaller one is perhaps a tad small. Our current thinking however, is that the smaller one will give us nice, lean joints and the larger one can (hopefully) be used to produce a bit of bacon (bacon needs a bit more fat on it and so is usually produced from a slightly heavier animal).
The usual recommendation is that a ‘porker’ (a pig used for pork production!!) should be at least 55kg in weight whilst a ‘baconer’ (again, rather obviously a pig used for bacon and gammon) should be 80kg or above. In between the two are ‘cutters’: these are pigs that are used to give bigger joints than a porker and they usually are 65kg or above.
From these figures, we could send off our two pigs now BUT we would like to hang on to them for a while longer yet, a) to give them a bit more of a life and b) because we would like the smaller one to get a bit heavier so we can have reasonable sized joints!!