Rare Pig Breeds Baylham Rare Breeds Farm Suffolk UK

Pigs are some of the most delightful and most maligned creatures to be found on farms. They are intelligent, clean and totally self confident, regarding other animals as inferior and certainly not accepting man as being in any way superior.

The Kune Kune, pronounced Cooney Cooney, is a Maori pig from New Zealand. They were kept by the Maoris as pets but were nevertheless eaten on special occasions. They were allowed to wander freely in Maori villages, scavenging for food around and inside the houses and it is probably this longstanding close association with man which has made them so friendly and docile.

They come in a variety of colours, black, brown, ginger, white and spotty combinations of white and any other colour. There are one or two breeders in the UK who are producing them for meat and it is reported to be excellent, however, most Kune Kune owners rapidly fall in love with them and couldn't possibly eat them.

The Large Black was developed a long time ago from a mixture of a large black pig once commonly found in Suffolk and one of a similar breed found in Cornwall. There are verbal traditions relating to both the old Suffolk and the Cornish pig which say that they both descended from pigs acquired from foreign boats which called at British ports and were carrying the pigs as a fresh meat supply.

The Large Black was once the commonest pig found in the UK. It thrives out of doors, is an excellent mother, is economical to feed and is ideally suited to small scale production. The eradication of swine fever in the early 60's made the introduction of intensive and large scale pig production units possible and these systems were much better suited to hybrid pink pigs and the decline of the Large Black began. In spite of its inability to meet modern commercial production criteria, the Large Black can produce excellent pork, ham and bacon. They are excellent mothers and can often produce up to thirteen piglets per litter. The breed record is 22 !

The Middle White was known as the London pork pig as it was raised in large numbers to supply the capital with excellent quality pork. Both the Emperor of Japan and Anthony Worral Thompson, the restaurant owning TV chef, keep herds of Middle Whites as they believe that the breed is unbeatable in the quality and flavour of the pork that it produces.

The Berkshire is the smallest of the native British breeds of pig. In the 19th Century both Chinese and Neapolitan pigs were imported to be crossed with the native British breeds in an attempt to create pigs with improved commercial qualities. By and large, these newly created pigs failed to meet the needs of the commercial market at the time and by 1900 thay had all died out with the exception of what had become known as the Berkshire. The Berkshire survived because it established a reputation for producing quality pork with excellent texture and flavour.