Table of Contents
This work is dedicated to my grandparents, Clifford and Margery Mann, for inspiring me to make farming my life, and to George and Esmeralda, who know what being a pig is all about.
INTRODUCTION
Why Pigs?
Pigs are one of the oldest domesticated animals and one of the most valuable to humans. Todays pigs are descendants of wild boars first domesticated in Asia and Europe several thousand years ago, when human societies shifted from being nomadic hunting and gathering based to settlement and agriculture based. Traditionally, the pig served as a primary food source in civilizations around the world, and no part was wasted: the pig has been a source of oil for cooking and lubrication, leather, brush bristles, and fertilizer, among other things.
Today, pigs are still an important commodity. Modern husbandry produces leaner, specialized swine breeds for cured products such as ham, sausage, and bacon and for fresh cuts such as chops and spareribs. Pigs have important medical uses as well: pig insulin and heart valves have successfully been used to treat human diseases for decades. And in some places, small breeds of the sociable pig have become popular pets.
Farmers interested in raising pigs for profit can do so easily as well as produce meat for their own freezers. Farm-raised pork is appealing to many people who are interested in knowing where their food comes from, the conditions in which the hogs were raised, and the nature and quality of the pigs diet. Consumersincluding gourmet home cooks, professional chefs, and ethnic and specialty marketsappreciate the ability to purchase directly from the farm, and farmers can potentially realize higher profits by selling their healthier and more flavorful pork.
Pigs can also be utilized to improve your property or complement your other livestock production. A farmer can take advantage of a pigs natural habit of rooting to clear brushy, weedy, or rough areas of a property, enabling and preparing the area to be reseeded or planted with a valuable crop. Pigs are extremely efficient utilizers of feedstuff and can fatten quickly on the wasted morsels of other animals.
CHAPTER ONE
Pigs: A Primer
Understanding the basics of pig evolution, biology, and behavior can provide valuable insight into selecting the right breed for your farm and caring for your new pigs. Heres a brief history of pigs and an overview of pig types, breeds, and traits.
THE PIGS PLACE IN HISTORY
Prehistoric drawings of wild boars can be found in Spains famed cave of Altamira, a dwelling of Cro-Magnon humans some 30,000 years ago. The artwork of ancient civilizations that followed depicted pigs in all sorts of settings, even in scenes with royalty and deities, suggesting that pigs have been familiar, useful animals throughout human history.
The domestication of wild pigs may have occurred first in central and eastern Asia. According to zooarchaeologist Richard Redding at the University of Michigan, 11,500-year-old pig bones have been recovered at Hallan Cemi, in southeastern Turkey. Further research indicates that these pigs were domesticated, predating the cultivation of cereal grains. Anthropologists also believe the Neolithic people of the Peiligang culture in China (7000 to 5000 BCE) raised millet and pigs as their primary food sources. Evidence of this cultivation has been recovered by an excavation site located at Jiahu, led by archeologist Shu Shi. And the earliest known book on raising pigs was recorded in 3468 BCE by Emperor Fo Hi of China.
Additionally, the pig has been an important food source in Europe for thousands of years, where it was both independently domesticated and introduced through trade and migration from the Far East. Pork products and lard were used to sustain Roman armies, and owning pig herds was a sign of wealth in Anglo-Saxon Europe.
Large numbers of pigs have traditionally been fed in small areas, thus maximizing production, as seen in this antique photo of a small-scale hog lot.
The pig has been both praised and maligned throughout history. Many a pig has been referred to as gluttonous, filthy, or fierce (or all three). No doubt some pigs do possess these qualities, but in general, pigs are not that way at all. Not until the early Middle Ages did cultural prejudices lead Europeans to view pigs as filthy or lowly creatures. Pigs acquired this undeserved reputation largely through teachings of the church, the most powerful institution in the medieval Western world. Various churches taught that demons took frightening, disgusting forms with the physical characteristics and habits of animals, especially pigs.
Despite cultural attitudes that lowered their status, pigs were raised in large numbers by Europeans, who eventually took their pigs to the New World lands they explored and conquered during the Renaissance. There, a pigs adaptability to varying foliage worked against domestication. Many pigs turned loose in the New World quickly adapted to new habitats and became feral hogs, widely roaming the American colonies by the 1600s. Over the centuries, immigrants from all lands brought their native pig breeds with them, and the pig population of North America became a hodgepodge of mixed breeds.
Pig populations spread across the United States as settlers moved westward. By the 1840s, a growing proportion of American pigs were raised on the fertile soil and plentiful corn of the Midwest and Great Plains. With the advent of the refrigerated railcar, pork production in the United States became solidly concentrated in the Midwest.
A pair of backyard pigs are curious, waiting to see if they will get a treat from onlookers. Pigs such as these would have been seen throughout the midwestern states as early as the 1830s.
Pigs as Good Luck
In many countries, pigs are considered to be good luck. In Ireland, for example, a peppermint-flavored candy Lucky Pig is wrapped in a velvet sack and given as a present. A tiny hammer is used to smash the pig while making a New Years wish, and the candy is shared by all.
Lucky Pigs, called Sparschweinchen, are given as a New Years present in German-speaking countries.
