Pigsalad Had Chunk Babies!
When Pigsalad, our Gloucester Old Spot sow, failed to show up for breakfast we knew something was up. She didn’t turn up on our initial search and there were sausages to be made. Presumably, she’d had the litter we’d been expecting, but she’d have to figure things out herself until we had the time to find her. At any rate, with our management system we’re really only spectators. Our job is really to “Ooh” and “Aah”. So we let her go for a couple of days and I went looking again after the Sunday Farmer’s Market.
I turned her up fairly quickly on my second search. She had made a nest in a clear area near the end of one of the hedgerows and had four of the most ridiculously cute piglets I’ve seen. I called Heather and said, “Oh my god, Pigsalad had Chunk babies! You have no idea how cute they are.”
Heather said, “Oh come on, I’ve seen plenty of piglets. How cute can they be?” She can be so wrong sometimes.
There’s actually a lot going on in the phrase “Pigsalad had Chunk babies”, both from an historical context and from the context of our farm. We currently have two boars, a Tamworth-Berkshire cross named Krull and a purebred mulefoot named Chunk. Both of them had “access” to Pigsalad during her heat cycle and we had no idea who the father of her piglets would be. Which is why I specified that she had Chunk babies and not just any old babies. I knew it as soon as I saw the piglets, although I had to wait until I saw their single, uncloven “mulefoot” hooves to be sure.
When I saw the hooves I knew that I was looking at some very unique piglets. Their father was of a breed of nearly extinct American homesteader’s hogs descended from unspecialized feral stock originally introduced by the Spanish. Their mother was of a breed of “improved” English hogs of mixed Northern European and Chinese bloodlines that is rare in England and almost unheard of here. Talk about unlikely bedfellows.
We think this bodes well for the little guys. The most robust pigs often come from crosses of distantly related stock. I don’t think the parents could be much more distant. I can say this: so far they sure are cute. White coats are dominant in pig genetics, so purebred white breeds of pigs should have all white piglets. Interestingly, although Pigsalad is mostly white (Old Spots are largely white with a few black spots), the Salad Chunks (that’s what we’re calling them now) are all black with white boots. One or two have white noses and one has a white tip on it’s tail. For whatever reason, mulefoot black wins out over Old Spot white. They have mulefoot hooves, which is also a dominant trait. They have full flop ears that don’t cover their eyes. Cute!