Rearing pigs in your garden is a lot easier than you might think – even if you live in the city, writes MICHAEL KELLY, who spoke to some fellow pig owners about the benefits of rearing 'Babe' out the back
ONE OF my favourite moments each year here on the Home Farm is the moment of exultant liberation when our two little pigs are let out of the pigsty for the first time. We rear two pigs in our garden for the table each year. They arrive here in March, to our one-acre garden in Waterford, when they are about eight weeks of age, cute as little puppies, and depart five months later for the local abattoir. We keep them down the end of the garden in a little plot but when they get here first they are too small to let out, and so we keep them in a walled pigsty until they get used to the place.
There is something supremely joyous about that moment when they are let out first. They have never been shown how to root – but within minutes of the gate being opened, following a few inquisitive sniffs in the air (could I, should I, will I?) they are busy rooting to their heart’s content and you can tell they just love it.
The commercial pig industry has more or less ignored the move towards free-range produce. You can get your hands on free-range chicken, lamb and beef but free-range pork or bacon is almost impossible to source.
More than any other animal, the pig is treated horrifically by the food chain and it’s all the crueller given that they are as intelligent as your family dog.
To satisfy our insatiable appetite for pork and bacon, we kill approximately 1.3 million pigs per year in this country with almost 90 per cent of them reared on just 380 pig farms. Many of these pigs are reared indoors, on concrete floors in sheds, fed high-protein feed to get them to killing weight quickly, and with nothing to do all day.
Given the conditions they are reared in, perhaps their miserably short lives (about 16 weeks) are not short enough.
The industry will say that pigs are treated humanely and kept in ultra modern, hygienic facilities. In my experience, pigs are not particularly interested in modern, nor do they put much store in hygiene. Give them some sun on their backs, a bit of space to root in, scraps from your kitchen and an occasional scratch behind the ears, and they will reward you with gregarious company, the finest manure and the best meat imaginable.
In contrast to the ultra lean/ultra bland pork that your supermarket has on offer, a happy outdoor pig produces a deeply “porky” dark meat lined with a decent layer of fat. The way pork used to taste.
The Department of Agriculture reports that one in five of the State’s 2,447 registered pig keepers are “hobbyists”, keeping fewer than three animals for their own consumption.
Thanks to the growing army of back garden pig-keepers, traditional rare breeds like Gloucester Old Spot and Tamworth are making a comeback, largely because they are better equipped than the commercial hairless breeds to thrive outdoors.
Are there downsides? Well, the result of all that rooting is that whatever ground you make available to them will be destroyed and in the rainy season that we euphemistically call summer, things can get pretty mucky.
Ideally then, you will need to allocate three plots to the purpose – each at least 100sq metres in size – and rotate the pigs around to give the ground time to recover. Pigs are noisy at times, particularly if they are hungry, and they pee and pooh a lot — dynamite for the fertility of your land, but the neighbours might not appreciate the pong. Also, be advised that pigs are big, strong, determined animals weighing up to 300kg and they treat everything (including your welly) as potential food.
The biggest downside of all, however, is that at some point, these wonderful animals that you have shared your life and your garden with have to go to slaughter. Meat, as it happens, doesn’t grow magically on a plastic tray wrapped in cellophane – the brutal reality is that an animal has to die.
The first year we kept pigs, we called them Charlotte and Wilbur, which was a mistake because it’s doubly difficult to kill animals that are named after the characters from a children’s novel.
I’ve given up struggling against growing fond of them while they are resident in our garden. We should be fond of them. We should look after them, feed them, fret about them and fuss over their health. Afterwards, the project shifts gears from animal husbandry to food production. We joint and carve and cut. We make sausages, chorizo, salamis and rashers, we cure bacon and make brawns. We fill the freezer with almost a year’s worth of food. And we are thankful for every morsel.
NICKY FORTUNE, KILKENNY
Fortune has a one-acre garden in Tullogher, Co Kilkenny, and started keeping pigs because of the quality of pork available in supermarkets
“Every time we ate pork it was giving us cramps, so we had just given up eating it. Four years ago, we got two saddlebacks. We put them in a plot up the back where we were going to grow vegetables, so they worked as rotivators.”
The family’s first pigs were called Parsley and Sprouts. “We were loading them up in the trailer and I remember my neighbour saying to me, ‘do you want me to take them back out, you look miserable!’. In the end, we held on to Sprouts. I couldn’t let her go. Every time we tried to eat pork we would be practically choking on it.” That was then. His three children have got used to having the pigs around. “They see the connection between animals and meat now. Alex (3), our youngest, will probably help me with the butchering this year.”
Though something of an old hand at pig-rearing at this stage, Fortune had a bit of catastrophe on the way to the abattoir last autumn.
“I was going down the main road with the pigs in the trailer and the guy driving behind me flashed and when I stopped he came up and said ‘you’re after losing a pig’.
“The pig had climbed up and jumped out on the road. In the end, we found him in someone’s garden eating the flowers.”
ELLA MCSWEENEY, BLACKROCK
Keeping pigs in the garden is not necessarily the preserve of country folk. A couple of minutes walk from Blackrock, Co Dublin, RTÉ presenter Ella McSweeney is rearing two Gloucester Old Spots in her one-third of an acre garden.
“When is the last time you saw a pig in a field?,” she replies when I ask her what possessed her to start rearing pigs. “In 1840, there were 350,000 pigs in Ireland kept on under an acre. I was looking at an old Ordinance Survey map of Dublin and kept seeing ‘piggery’ on the map.
“There is massive potential to reintroduce pigs to Dublin, particularly in those old council houses that have huge gardens. I wanted to experience meat production and be an honest carnivore.”
McSweeney’s approach has been to keep things as thrifty as possible. “I got plans for a simple pig ark and made it for €100 from sandbags and salvaged wood. I feed them barley and I go to a local veg shop and fill a bucket with stuff they are throwing out.”
The Department of Agriculture inspector, she says, thought she was off her rocker. What do her neighbours think? “They love them. Pigs are endlessly entertaining. I have never had so many friends. People just come around and want to stare at them, touch them.”
McSweeney’s pigs are being killed soon, and she will do the butchering herself, having done a pig butchery course with Philip Dennhardt at Ballymaloe. “I will miss them because they are a huge presence but I was very clear from outset that they are not pets.”
Raising your pig
- You will need to apply for registrationas a pig herd owner under the Department of Agriculture's National Pig Identification and Tracing System. You will receive a herd number (and possibly an inspection). Call 1890 504 604.
- Always keep more than one— pigs are incredibly sociable animals and like company.
- If you are keeping pigs in an area of your garden and they escape, they will do serious damage to the rest of your garden. Try a combination of sheep fencingand a battery powered electric fence.
- Pigs are not fussy about housingbut it must be weather proof and sturdy – a pig ark, outhouse or stable would be ideal.
- Typically pigs are fed pig nuts or a mixture of grains including barley. Keep a pig bucketunder your sink and put leftovers (but absolutely no meat) in it.
Five traditional breeds
Gloucester Old Spot
A hardy white pig with black spots
Oxford Sandy and Black
Has an excellent temperament and high quality meat
Berkshire
One of the oldest breeds, black with white legs
Saddleback
A black pig with a white belt around shoulders
Tamworth
A hairy, red pig
Michael Kelly is author of Tales from the Home Farmand founder of GIY (Grow it Yourself) Ireland. Visit the pig forum at giyireland.com
