"I think you are pretty dialed in on raising the hogs. The pork has always been very good but this year's is outstanding!
Thanks for all your hard work." –Fritz, Sun Prairie. Customer since 2017
Thanks for all your hard work." –Fritz, Sun Prairie. Customer since 2017
Now taking reservations for fall 2026.
We offer pork in custom-cut wholes, halves, and 25 pound boxes.
How It Works:
Call or email Odyssey Farm to order your whole, half, or 25lb box of pork. I will confirm your order via email when I receive your $150 deposit for a whole or half or $75 deposit for a 25 lb box—check made out to Odyssey Farm, LLC.
25 Pound Boxes:
The 25 Pound Pork Box costs $375 and requires a $75 deposit upon order. Check made payable to Odyssey Farm.
A 25 pound box is about 1 cubic foot of meat or about one standard milk crate.
Pork Boxes include (1) cured ham, (1) butt, shoulder, or loin roast, (3-4) packages of pork chops, (3) packages of bacon, (3) pounds of breakfast sausage, breakfast links, or ground pork, and at least one additional item such as hocks, ribs, or brats.
Box contents may vary. Substitutions are possible based on availability.
(Sorry, you cannot substitute additional bacon for any other cut. Only 14.5 % of a hog is belly. It's one of those limits we run into with sustainable living. )
Click here for a great guide to pork cuts
Wholes and Halves -Quick Breakdown:
A live hog of 293 lbs will yield about 160 lbs of take home meat at a minimum.
Ordering half a hog will give you around 80 lbs of take home meat. You pay Odyssey Farm for the hog based on its hanging weight and then pay the processor the fees for slaughter, cutting, curing, grinding, and packaging the meat -also based on a hanging weight base fee and per pound fees for curing bacon and hams.
The Details:
I prefer to butcher hogs close to 300 lbs since they put on more fat, and their meat gains greater flavor and texture. Depending on the individual animal and the season, I have finished animals anywhere between 240 and 430 lbs. Heritage breeds really come into flavor at 300lbs and above. The typical bland, feedlot market hog is butchered around 260 lbs.
What I list below is a ballpark estimate of weights and yields. Seasons and individual animals vary.
We take our hogs to Country Meat Cutters, a state-inspected facility in Reeseville as well as using Northern Trails Meats in Watertown for on-farm slaughter. For customers who haven't had a hog processed through Country Meat Cutters or Northern Trails Meats before, I will walk you through the order form. This conversation also ensures that you understand the process and are getting what you want. For maximum quality control, I turn in a list of customers and their corresponding hogs to the processor, along with the stack of customers' order forms, when I drop off that batch of hogs. The following day, I get each animal's hanging weight—what the hog weighs after it’s slaughtered, gutted, and its blood has been drained. I will send you an invoice based on that hanging weight. You pay Odyssey Farm for the hanging weight of your hog.
A 293 lb hog at live weight typically yields 205 lbs hanging weight or 102.5 lbs hanging weight for each half.
NOTE: I use 293 lbs as a ballpark, beginning number to estimate your costs. Most of my animals finish over 293 lbs. I reverse calculated the 293 because I know the average trailer load weight and that my hanging weights last year were 200-210 for most animals. Larger animals will yield more meat at a lower cost per pound of meat than the examples below.
Processing yields about 78% of hanging weight due to removing the head, hooves, and meat off the bone for the trim cuts. A 102.5 lb half hog in this example would yield about 80 lbs of processed meat broken down as follows:
(2) 8.8 lb Hams
13.6 lbs Pork Chops
(1) 4 lb Loin Roast (end of the loin that's too short to finish sawing into chops)
(2) 4.4 lb Shoulder Roast
(1) 4 lb Pork Butt Roast
2.7 lbs Spare Ribs
1.3 lbs Hocks
10 lbs Belly (can be bacon or side pork)
18 lb ground pork/sausage/brats
80 lbs of meat fills about 3.2 cubic feet of freezer space. For reference, a milk crate is one cubic foot.
The above is just an example. You dictate the thickness of your chops, how you want the ham cut, and how you want the trim meats: breakfast links, brats, pork sausage, or just ground pork.
Whole hogs are $6.75/lb hanging weight. Halves are $7.05/lb hanging weight.
A customer ordering a half hog at 102.5 lbs hanging weight would pay Odyssey Farm $722.63 for the half hog.
They would pay the processor $32.50 for the slaughter, $87.13 ($.85/lb hanging weight) for processing, about $31.61 for smoking bacon and hams, and about $10 for brats and sausage, for a total of $161.24 for processing (indicates paper wrapped meat. Vac-packing is an additional $.40/lb.) [Slaughter, Processing, and Vac-pac fees are set by Country Meat Cutters and subject to change]
That's a grand total of $883.86 for 80 lbs of pastured raised, organically fed, soy-free, acorn-finished, heritage pork -at $11.05/lb. (Which is still significantly less than the price per pound for high-end bacon, chops, roasts or ham that won’t have nearly the same level of flavor from feed quality resulting from regenerative and organic practices.)
That same animal ordered as a whole hog would cost $10.66/lb for the meat.
The processor will contact you when processing is complete, about ten days after slaughter. You pay them directly for processing when you pick up your meat from them.
Country Meat Cutters
W9851 County Rd GG
Reeseville, WI 53579
(920) 927-5577
http://www.countrymeatcutters.com/
Northern Trails Meats
109 Emerald St.
Watertown, WI
(920) 261-7807
http://www.northerntrailsmeats.com/index.html
Please visit the processors' websites for their most current prices to slaughter, process, cure (bacon and hams), and package (paper or vac-pack) meat. You can always reach out to me with your questions.
How It Works:
Call or email Odyssey Farm to order your whole, half, or 25lb box of pork. I will confirm your order via email when I receive your $150 deposit for a whole or half or $75 deposit for a 25 lb box—check made out to Odyssey Farm, LLC.
25 Pound Boxes:
The 25 Pound Pork Box costs $375 and requires a $75 deposit upon order. Check made payable to Odyssey Farm.
A 25 pound box is about 1 cubic foot of meat or about one standard milk crate.
Pork Boxes include (1) cured ham, (1) butt, shoulder, or loin roast, (3-4) packages of pork chops, (3) packages of bacon, (3) pounds of breakfast sausage, breakfast links, or ground pork, and at least one additional item such as hocks, ribs, or brats.
Box contents may vary. Substitutions are possible based on availability.
(Sorry, you cannot substitute additional bacon for any other cut. Only 14.5 % of a hog is belly. It's one of those limits we run into with sustainable living. )
Click here for a great guide to pork cuts
Wholes and Halves -Quick Breakdown:
A live hog of 293 lbs will yield about 160 lbs of take home meat at a minimum.
Ordering half a hog will give you around 80 lbs of take home meat. You pay Odyssey Farm for the hog based on its hanging weight and then pay the processor the fees for slaughter, cutting, curing, grinding, and packaging the meat -also based on a hanging weight base fee and per pound fees for curing bacon and hams.
The Details:
I prefer to butcher hogs close to 300 lbs since they put on more fat, and their meat gains greater flavor and texture. Depending on the individual animal and the season, I have finished animals anywhere between 240 and 430 lbs. Heritage breeds really come into flavor at 300lbs and above. The typical bland, feedlot market hog is butchered around 260 lbs.
What I list below is a ballpark estimate of weights and yields. Seasons and individual animals vary.
We take our hogs to Country Meat Cutters, a state-inspected facility in Reeseville as well as using Northern Trails Meats in Watertown for on-farm slaughter. For customers who haven't had a hog processed through Country Meat Cutters or Northern Trails Meats before, I will walk you through the order form. This conversation also ensures that you understand the process and are getting what you want. For maximum quality control, I turn in a list of customers and their corresponding hogs to the processor, along with the stack of customers' order forms, when I drop off that batch of hogs. The following day, I get each animal's hanging weight—what the hog weighs after it’s slaughtered, gutted, and its blood has been drained. I will send you an invoice based on that hanging weight. You pay Odyssey Farm for the hanging weight of your hog.
A 293 lb hog at live weight typically yields 205 lbs hanging weight or 102.5 lbs hanging weight for each half.
NOTE: I use 293 lbs as a ballpark, beginning number to estimate your costs. Most of my animals finish over 293 lbs. I reverse calculated the 293 because I know the average trailer load weight and that my hanging weights last year were 200-210 for most animals. Larger animals will yield more meat at a lower cost per pound of meat than the examples below.
Processing yields about 78% of hanging weight due to removing the head, hooves, and meat off the bone for the trim cuts. A 102.5 lb half hog in this example would yield about 80 lbs of processed meat broken down as follows:
(2) 8.8 lb Hams
13.6 lbs Pork Chops
(1) 4 lb Loin Roast (end of the loin that's too short to finish sawing into chops)
(2) 4.4 lb Shoulder Roast
(1) 4 lb Pork Butt Roast
2.7 lbs Spare Ribs
1.3 lbs Hocks
10 lbs Belly (can be bacon or side pork)
18 lb ground pork/sausage/brats
80 lbs of meat fills about 3.2 cubic feet of freezer space. For reference, a milk crate is one cubic foot.
The above is just an example. You dictate the thickness of your chops, how you want the ham cut, and how you want the trim meats: breakfast links, brats, pork sausage, or just ground pork.
Whole hogs are $6.75/lb hanging weight. Halves are $7.05/lb hanging weight.
A customer ordering a half hog at 102.5 lbs hanging weight would pay Odyssey Farm $722.63 for the half hog.
They would pay the processor $32.50 for the slaughter, $87.13 ($.85/lb hanging weight) for processing, about $31.61 for smoking bacon and hams, and about $10 for brats and sausage, for a total of $161.24 for processing (indicates paper wrapped meat. Vac-packing is an additional $.40/lb.) [Slaughter, Processing, and Vac-pac fees are set by Country Meat Cutters and subject to change]
That's a grand total of $883.86 for 80 lbs of pastured raised, organically fed, soy-free, acorn-finished, heritage pork -at $11.05/lb. (Which is still significantly less than the price per pound for high-end bacon, chops, roasts or ham that won’t have nearly the same level of flavor from feed quality resulting from regenerative and organic practices.)
That same animal ordered as a whole hog would cost $10.66/lb for the meat.
The processor will contact you when processing is complete, about ten days after slaughter. You pay them directly for processing when you pick up your meat from them.
Country Meat Cutters
W9851 County Rd GG
Reeseville, WI 53579
(920) 927-5577
http://www.countrymeatcutters.com/
Northern Trails Meats
109 Emerald St.
Watertown, WI
(920) 261-7807
http://www.northerntrailsmeats.com/index.html
Please visit the processors' websites for their most current prices to slaughter, process, cure (bacon and hams), and package (paper or vac-pack) meat. You can always reach out to me with your questions.
"Ridiculously good—will definitely order from you every year. " --Micah, Fitchburg
"We have been enjoying some of the best pork we have ever eaten. We would highly recommend pork from Odyssey Farm."
—Keith, Plymouth
"We have been enjoying some of the best pork we have ever eaten. We would highly recommend pork from Odyssey Farm."
—Keith, Plymouth