This pig breeder, Forest Coal Pit Farm, based in the Snowdonia National Park, popped up in a @JennyLinford piece about the collapse of Farmdrop this week (and in my browsing history back in 2019). They’ve still got their ‘native’ Welsh Blacks (not one of the traditional rare breeds), seen in this video…
…a cross between the Large Black and the Duroc, “the Black Angus of pork”, an American breed that I’ve covered in depth here and even a beautiful “Mangatam” sow called Ariel…
…half Mangalitsa and half Tamworth cross, of whom they rave
She showed amazing natural instincts and would throw all the straw I lovingly gave her in her ark out to make her own natural bed comprised of a layer of holly then fern then grass by the end of it it was about 2 ft high. Any pig book would say you only want the straw bed 10cm high but Ariel knew what she was doing so I left her to it and she raised her piglets without losing any. She has now had 7 litters and hasn’t lost a single piglet which is incredible.
This kind of behaviour just isn’t usual in most pigs in the UK now. You certainly won’t see this in the factory farmed ones (although they’re not given any space or outside opportunity to do this, so I may be misjudging them slightly).
One time she had 11 piglets and one out of that was so runty and tiny I said to her this is the first one you’re going to lose Ariel. But to my surprise I saw Ariel on day 2 take this tiny piglet to the edge of the pen and feed it by itself which is just unheard of. When a told a fellow pig farmer this he was utterly amazed and said “we’ve done something wrong with the breeding in the industry to lose this type of natural ability’
The unknown farmer is right, of course.
And I also suspect that this would make some fine, fine Iberico, so if you can buy from them, you really should, to try and help their business survive the Farmdrop fiasco…