Pig slaughtering without heavy equipment.

hey everyone

I am just thinking ahead and wanting to figure out how to hang/scald our pigs this year. Last year we used a crane truck/hiab truck. It was easy and did not require heavy lifting at all.
so now there is a chance this year i will be not doing the crane truck method. I need to be able to lift the pigs into the hot water for scalding and scrapping.

So out comes the creative process!

So what I have in mind is creating a swing boom with a tree. I am going to look into an electric winch to lift the pigs with. I am hoping to be able to put a pole into the base of the tree and attach the pole at the top with a heavy wire/come along. In my head the pole would be a tree which is about 20 feet long and i am hoping to be able to attach a block and tackle to the end of the pole to use to lift the pigs with. The tip of the pole would be directly in line with the barrel for dipping the pigs.

so hopefully this make sense. I am hoping someone has info which would be helpful as searching around on duck duck go was not very helpful(maybe i didn't know the right key words to search for). I did manage to find a site talking about a swing boom to lift logs with at a sawmill.

here is a photo of the swing boom for logs


Another image of a way to lift logs






One of my neighbours has something similar to what i am wanting to do. I will try and get a photo soon to post what i am talking about.

So yes any information would be appreciated. :D

Our neighbor has a pulley handing in a tree. Then they have a rope attached to a car and pull the hog up via the pulley.

I like the trailer setup, a pig will be very hard to maneuver and the water bath is way too heavy to move. You can’t easily hang the pig right over the bath, unless the pulley is far up. That would involve a throw line, but also a bath and fire underneath a tree you don’t want to damage.

The trailer boom would allow you to hang the pig, move it to get it over the bath, and reliably get it out without pouring hundreds of liters of boiling water out. This maneuver is pretty hazardous I have seen scald burns from it. That boom method seems safe and probably could be broken down in between butchering. I would assume the boom needs to be somewhere around 10’ or 3.3 m for a medium pig over a standard drum. I really like this idea. You could use round wood for it, but really lots of materials could be used.

Tj Jefferson wrote:I like the trailer setup, a pig will be very hard to maneuver and the water bath is way too heavy to move. You can’t easily hang the pig right over the bath, unless the pulley is far up. That would involve a throw line, but also a bath and fire underneath a tree you don’t want to damage.

The trailer boom would allow you to hang the pig, move it to get it over the bath, and reliably get it out without pouring hundreds of liters of boiling water out. This maneuver is pretty hazardous I have seen scald burns from it. That boom method seems safe and probably could be broken down in between butchering. I would assume the boom needs to be somewhere around 10’ or 3.3 m for a medium pig over a standard drum. I really like this idea. You could use round wood for it, but really lots of materials could be used.

thanks tj. I do not have a trailer i could use.

What i am trying to replicate is in this video. around 10 minutes it shows the setup. His is on the back of a box truck.

we just tipped a metal barrel  half way on its side built a fire under it dunked the pig turned then pulled it out to a pallet used buckets to pour hot water on spots that didn't quite get enough. scraped and washed
you need a lift to hang any way the higher up in a tree you can hang from the more movement you can get side to side we never let them get over about 150 lbs just to much work for two.
butchered a 700 lb cow once, week long non stop. won't do that again alone .
you also need a way to cool and refrigerate while you are working on other pieces .

For elk we use a block and tackle type pulley system (7:1 mechanical advantage).  The hard part is getting it up high enough.  The rope to tie off the pulleys, the pulleys themselves and the gambrel take up probably close to 3' feet of height.  For a hog you'd need the length of the animal plus the height above the ground to get it into the scalding barrel safely.  So if the pig is say 5' from Achilles tendon to snout while stretched out hanging, and the top of the barrel is 4' from the ground (34.5" for the barrel and about a foot for a burner) that's a minimum of 12' height required.  For an elk I need about that because the length is more than a pig, but no scalding barrel to clear.  If you use a winch like shown in the drawing in the OP you might be able to cut that height down to 10-11' because that won't use as much of the available height as what I have.

But if you can get the height, one decently strong person can lift even a good size elk (700lbs) by themselves.  

so here are the photos of my neighbours swing boom. He says he uses it mainly for lifting fuel tanks in his trucks. It is located in his driveway. He said he uses a chain hoist to lift the tanks with. The top of the pole is attached with some cable and "U" clamps. I like it!



"tucked" into the base of the tree.


Showing the end of it.

There's a Foxfire Book on this subject.  I don't have it in front of me, but there you go.

When we had a mobile butcher here to butcher pigs, he had a bathtub-shaped metal trough for the scalding, so the pig only needed to be lowered in and out once. If you put a the tub in the right place, you could do this with a rope over a branch or beam.

Here's photos from how the process went with the mobile butcher: https://thenourishinghearthfire.com/2018/06/26/pig-day/