Ossabaw Island Pigs, a New Addition to Our Farm

Friday, Chad wrote this on our facebook page:

Danelle is on her way to pick up a breeding pair of Ossabaw Island Hogs - should have them in their pen learning what an electric fence is by this afternoon.

Generally speaking I don't put much stock in the differences associated with pig breeds...it's not the breed, it's how likely the breed was to have been bred at some point in it's family tree for confinement traits. Breeds like Berkshire, Large Black, or Mule Foot aren't necessarily better, they are just less likely than something like a yorkshire to have been bred for confinement. Even then you have to be sure to talk to the breeder to see how many generations they've been on pasture to be sure to get the right kind of traits for pasture. Even confinement hogs will remember how to be pigs again after a generation on grass or in the woods.

Ossabaws though...these are different. There are Ossabaws raised in confinement by scientists studying them due to their extremely efficient feed conversion, but they aren't bred with confinement traits in mind, and everyone raising them for meat has them in pasture or wooded areas. They remain for the most part, exactly as they are found in the wild.

They are descendants from the Spanish Iberian pigs that are run in the oak forest in spain to produce the most famous hams in the world. They were let go on Ossabaw Island south of Georgia* so they could naturalize and be a food source for the Spanish. Fast forward to today and they are much smaller pigs heavily adapted to foraging and living in harsh conditions on their own. They aren't 'improved' like almost all the other pig breeds - they retain as much piginess as is possible to have in farm raised pork. They have the darker richer flavor and marbling of the spanish Iberian, with the ability to efficiently convert extra feed into lard in large quantities.

We expect to begin offering meat from these pigs sometime next year - price still to be determined, but carcass size will be smaller...though, because they have superpowers, they produce about the same amount of bacon as one of our Berkshires would despite the small size.

They may be the perfect pig. : )

The drive was long and hot and I got lost twice, delaying our trip by nearly 3 hours and putting us smack into the intense and dangerous heat of the day that my 5 am departure was meant to avoid. I stopped and refilled icebags into the water pan twice. Poured cold water onto the pigs a few times too. It was not a good day for transport.

All said they settle in nicely. The kids learned a lot of 1920's and agricultural history (Bonnie and Clyde and why there are so many fruit orchards in Missouri). It was a hot, sticky, lovely road trip. 

*originally I had written Florida and that was a mistake. There is also new evidence that shows the pigs ancestry and I will share that soon!