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    The Illustrated Guide to Pigs: How to Choose Them, How to Keep Them
    The Illustrated Guide to Pigs: How to Choose Them, How to Keep Them
    The Illustrated Guide to Pigs: How to Choose Them, How to Keep Them
    Ebook275 pages1 hour

    The Illustrated Guide to Pigs: How to Choose Them, How to Keep Them

    By Celia Lewis

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    About this ebook

    With a resurgence of interest in raising animals, this delightfully illustrated and informative book is ideal for anyone who wants to choose the most suitable pig breed. The Illustrated Guide to Pigs covers thirty-eight of the most common breeds of pig in North America and Europe. Lewis has included helpful introductory sections with practical advice about pig rearing and husbandry, outlining the difference between the breeds. There are also practical sections on how to buy pigs, the equipment required to keep them, and advice on their basic care, feeding, and hygiene.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateSep 1, 2011
    ISBN9781628730937
    The Illustrated Guide to Pigs: How to Choose Them, How to Keep Them
    Author

    Celia Lewis

    Celia Lewis is an accomplished artist and the author of the bestselling Illustrated Guide to Chickens, Illustrated Guide to Pigs and Illustrated Guide to Ducks and Geese and Other Domestic Fowl as well as the wonderful An Illustrated Country Year. Celia started her art career studying life and portrait charcoal drawing with Signorina Simi in Florence. She is now a member of a dynamic art group and several art societies in Surrey where she lives. She has won several prizes including the 2005 Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour (RI) medal and Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) Winsor & Newton Prize 2009. Living in the country Celia is lucky enough to be able to keep hens and pigs in her garden and, along with nearby cows and sheep, this is where she finds her inspiration. Although working mainly in watercolour she has now branched out into acrylics.

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      Book preview

      The Illustrated Guide to Pigs - Celia Lewis

      Introduction

      For some reason the pig has historically attracted a great deal of bad press, most of it entirely unwarranted. The term sweating like a pig is positively inaccurate, as pigs possess no sweat glands. And as one of the more intelligent animals it's hard to see why pigs give their name to the derogatory expression ‘pig ignorant’? A dirty pig is hard to find in the porcine world, as pigs never soil their beds if they can possibly help it. And as for pig ugly, beauty has always been in the eye of the beholder and many pig lovers would hotly dispute this description.

      The pig is a remarkably adaptable animal and famously every part of it can be used except the squeal. The bristles are used for the finest hairbrushes and artists' paintbrushes, and once upon a time were used to make toothbrushes. The intestines provide skins for sausages; pigs' blood is turned into black pudding; while albumin, a protein in blood, is used in fixing pigment colors in cloth, clarifying liquors and making waterproof glues. Tusks and bones are used to make buttons and are an important component in bone china and bone meal in fertiliser.

      Heart valves from specially bred pigs are successfully used in human heart transplants while pigs' pancreas glands provide a source of insulin for diabetics. As the hairs grow through the hide, pigskin leather is porous and breathable and suitable for items including gloves, shoes, footballs and saddles.

      Pigs contribute all of the above—not to mention bacon, pork and lard. Today, different types of pigs are specially reared to produce pork or bacon—the former are more muscular and solid, the latter longer and leaner. In the past they were also specially bred for lard, once an important product used for cooking and as an essential lubricant, in the manufacture of soap, as lamp oil, in cosmetics and explosives. When newly developed synthetic lubricants and vegetable oils took over by the 1950s, the breeding of lard pigs declined.

      Descendents of the Wild Boar (see pages 145–147), pigs were one of the very first animals to be tamed and domesticated by humans—perhaps as long as 9000 years ago. As omnivores, they can and do eat anything and everything, a fact that made their early domestication considerably easier for the farmer. Domestic swine are now found on every continent on earth except Antarctica.

      By the Middle Ages in Europe, virtually every hobby farmer would have kept a cottagers pig, a sow that raised piglets over the summer. In the autumn when food became short the young pigs would be slaughtered and their meat salted to feed the family through the winter. Just a few boars would be kept and the boar walker would come round in the spring. Each village had a swineherd whose responsibility was to take the pigs to forage for acorns or beechnuts.

      Although individual pig keeping had declined following the great movement to urban areas that took place in the nineteenth century, during the Second World War many British people were encouraged to keep a pig. As they could be economically fed on household waste, trash cans were used to hold for scraps for the pig. Today this rather random approach to nutrition would probably not be allowed, as government regulations require that all pigs must be vegetarian.

      After the war, pig keeping turned into a commercial enterprise. By the end of the 1950s, large-scale pig keeping units raising thousands of animals were found everywhere, and the hobby farmer with a pig or two became a rarity.

      Today, small-scale pig farming is gaining once more in popularity as people become more interested in where and how their meat is reared. Many breeds that were on the brink of extinction are gaining in numbers. While factory farms remain the norm in the United States, organic farming is expanding rapidly, with nearly 5 million acres dedicated to organic production systems.

      ...............

      This book is aimed both at people who are interested in raising their own pigs as well as those who simply love them in all their various forms. It gives an introduction to how to keep pigs, from deciding on the correct breed for your circumstances, to buying, transporting and settling them in. It covers aspects of feeding and looking after pigs including farrowing and dealing with ailments, followed by an illustrated guide to 38 popular breeds. The last section focuses on the slaughtering process, the various cuts of meat and explains how to cure bacon and ham and make sausages.

      HOW PIGS WON THE WAR

      Because of the pail,

             the scraps were saved,

      Because of the scraps,

             the pigs were saved

      Because of the pigs,

             the rations were saved,

      Because of the rations,

             the ships were saved,

      Because of the ships,

             the island was saved,

      Because of the island,

             the Empire was saved,

      And all because of

             the housewife's pail.

             Words from a Ministry of

                 Food advertisement 1941

      The Pig's Tale

      There was a Pig that sat alone

      Beside a ruined Pump:

      By day and night he made his moan—

      It would have stirred a heart of stone

      To see him wring his hoofs and groan,

      Because he could not jump.

      A certain Camel heard him shout—

      A Camel with a hump.

      "Oh, is it Grief, or is it Gout?

      What is this bellowing about?"

      That Pig replied, with quivering snout,

      Because I cannot jump!

      That Camel scanned him, dreamy-eyed.

      "Methinks you are too plump.

      I never knew a Pig so wide—

      That wobbled so from side to side—

      Who could, however much he tried,

      Do such a thing as jump!

      "Yet mark those trees, two miles away,

      All clustered in a clump:

      If you could trot there twice a day,

      Nor ever pause for rest or play,

      In the far future— Who can say?—

      You may be fit to jump."

      That Camel passed, and left him there,

      Beside the ruined Pump.

      Oh, horrid was that Pig's despair!

      His shrieks of anguish filled the air.

      He wrung his hoofs, he rent his hair,

      Because he could not jump.

      There was a Frog that wandered by—

      A sleek and shining lump:

      Inspected him with fishy eye,

      And said O Pig, what makes you cry?

      And bitter was that Pig's reply,

      Because I cannot jump!

      That Frog he grinned a grin of glee,

      And hit his chest a thump.

      O Pig, he said, "be ruled by me,

      And you shall see what you shall see.

      This minute, for a trifling fee,

      I'll teach you how to jump!

      "You may be faint from many a fall,

      And bruised by many a bump:

      But, if you persevere through all,

      And practise first on something small,

      Concluding with a ten-foot wall,

      You'll find that you can jump!"

      That Pig looked up with joyful start:

      "Oh Frog, you are a trump!

      Your words have healed my inward smart—

      Come, name your fee and do your part:

      Bring comfort to a broken heart,

      By teaching me to jump!"

      "My fee shall be a mutton-chop,

      My goal this ruined Pump.

      Observe with what an airy flop

      I plant myself upon the top!

      Now bend your knees and take a hop,

      For that's the way to jump!"

      Uprose that Pig, and rushed, full whack,

      Against the ruined Pump:

      Rolled over like an empty sack,

      And settled down upon his back,

      While all his bones at once went Crack!

      It was a fatal jump.

                                                          Lewis Carroll

      Why keep a pig?

      There may be a number of reasons why you may be thinking of keeping a pig or two.

      Raising for meat

      If you've never kept a pig before it is highly recommended that you start by raising a couple of weaners to supply your freezer and see how you do. This will entail buying in newly weaned pigs at around eight weeks old—these can be gilts or boars. You may have heard of boar taint (a taste or smell that may affect the meat of uncastrated male pigs) but this will not be an issue if your animals go for slaughter at 20–24 weeks before they reach sexual maturity. An added bonus of boar weaners is that you won't be tempted to keep them to breed from which might be the case with gilts. If the weaners you bought are being sold for pork there may well be a

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