KANSAS CITY, MO. — For Alex Swanstrom, an auditor at a financial firm, cutting into the dead pig wasn’t hard. It was what happened next that made him rethink whether whole-animal butchery was something he was ready to dive into.

Decked out in a black apron on a recent Sunday afternoon, Mr. Swanstrom, 27, slipped a six-inch boning knife into the carcass of a 275-pound Berkshire-Duroc hog that was splayed out in two large hemispheres on a table inside Local Pig, a butcher shop in this city’s industrial East Bottoms area. He was supposed to carve off the front shank, which requires separating the flesh and tendons around the lower shoulder to remove the limb. But even after dislocating a joint — it popped with the shrill squeak of compressed air escaping — the shoulder still hung together fibrously, causing Mr. Swanstrom to have to pull it over the side of the table for better leverage.

“Don’t force it,” said Alex Pope, one of the shop’s owners. “If you are in a spot that feels like it’s not going well, just move the knife around a little bit.”

When the limb detached, Mr. Swanstrom handed it over and took a swig of his beer.

“That was tougher than I thought,” he said.