Time to book a pig into the abattoir

With the Scottish restrictions on livestock being moved to slaughter being eased still further, we’ve decided to book Rocket, our Berkshire porker, in with Scotch Premier as soon as they can take her.

We’d like to keep her until she reaches 80kg liveweight, which usually provides around 55kg of meat, but if there any new outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease we could find ourselves stuck with a pig that can’t be sent for slaughter for weeks.

When I rang Scotch Premier earlier today, they were still clearing the backlog of commercial pigs so the earliest, most convenient date I could get Rocket in for private slaughter was Tuesday, 11 September.

I prefer to do the abattoir run on a Tuesday as the Other Half has a car share then, so we don’t need to worry about finding her a lift while I have the car.

Tuesdays also work out well with our butcher in Insch as Scotch Premier deliver meat to him on a Thursday and our carcasses are included in that delivery.

Now all we have to do is hope that there are no further FMD outbreaks in the next fortnight!