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CHAPTER 1

History

A pig in almost every cottage sty. That is the infallible mark of a happy people.

— William Cobbett

Most of the species eaten by man have other primary uses. Cattle and goats give milk and work in yoke or harness, sheep provide wool, chickens and ducks lay eggs, but pigs have been kept since antiquity for a single purpose: pork.

Humans dined on pork from wild boars long before they domesticated pigs. But wild boars were, and are, formidable prey, especially for hunters armed with ancient weapons, so it made sense to grab piglets belonging to slain sows and take them to the womenfolk to raise. Then, as now in parts of the world, women breast-fed piglets, creating a bond that kept the little porkers close to the fold. Domestication was a breeze — more so than with any other species.

Man Tames the Pig

Eurasian wild boars, the ancestors of today's domestic pigs, evolved from earlier piglike creatures some 23 to 37 million years ago. They originated in Southeast Asia and spread across the rest of Asia and Europe.

Until recently, scientists believed pigs were domesticated on two fronts — China and eastern Turkey — between 9,000 and 11,000 years ago, and from there domestic pigs spread to Europe and the rest of Asia with migrating Neolithic farmers. Recent research has shown that early domestication was more widespread than this. A team of archaeologists from Durham University in the United Kingdom analyzed DNA material from hundreds of modern and ancient wild boars and domestic pigs across western Eurasia. They concluded that additional domestications of wild boars occurred in such places as Central Europe, Northern India, Southeast Asia, and possibly even Oceania. As research continues, additional sites will undoubtedly surface.

Pigs were ideal candidates for domestication. In fact, pigs may have practically domesticated themselves. Garbage, including human excrement, generated by settlements was a powerful attractant for hungry wild pigs who soon chose to live on the fringes of encampments and villages. Captured piglets were easy to tame, and domesticated pigs cost the community virtually nothing in care or feed; tame pigs ate whatever garbage the settlement provided and ranged nearby for nuts, fruits, and delicacies such as wild bird eggs. They reproduced freely. When the community needed meat, it killed a pig.

As humans migrated to larger settlements, so did pigs. In addition to the tasty meat they provided, pigs kept things tidy. Pigs were often kept specifically to process human waste. According to Robert L. Miller in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, a family of four could raise four young pigs on the 2 kilograms of human waste and 220 grams of garbage they generated each day. Cities used pigs to clean the streets. Garbage pigs roamed New York City well into the nineteenth century. In Naples, even wealthy families kept a pig tethered on their grounds to consume garbage and "night soil." Humans and pigs formed a symbiotic and enduring relationship that still exists in backyard pigpens all over the world.

The Rise of Market Pigs

At the insistence of Queen Isabella of Spain, explorer Christopher Columbus carried eight pigs in the hold of his ship on his second voyage in 1493. When he unloaded them at Hispaniola, the Caribbean island that now comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic, they were the first swine to set hoof on New World soil. The pigs thrived and multiplied; their descendants and those of later importations became walking food supplies for various Spanish expeditions, including Francisco Pizarro's conquest of Peru, Hernando de Soto's and Juan Ponce de León's forays into the southeastern United States, and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's southwestern exploration.

John Smith brought pigs to the Jamestown Colony in 1607. By 1623, the pilgrims at Plymouth Colony had pigs. Two years later, Peter Evertsen of the Dutch East India Company introduced pigs to New York City, then called New Amsterdam, where they roamed the byways as four-legged street cleaners until well into the mid-1800s.

Large-scale pig farms develop. Country

folk tended to raise pigs in the time-honored way of releasing them into the forest to rustle their own grub. However, the rise of oil and grist mills in the early to mid-1700s provided cheap and nutritious by-products to feed penned pigs, as did waste from such institutions as hospitals. Larger-scale pig farming soon emerged as a lucrative business, and East Coast pig farmers did a booming export trade throughout the eighteenth century. Virginia shipped bacon to Britain and Europe, while Massachusetts specialized in salt pork.

After the Revolutionary War, settlers began moving westward to establish new farmlands, always taking porkers along. As a growing number of pigs populated farms west of the Appalachians, Eastern entrepreneurs built more processing and packing plants. Since railroads weren't widely established in the pig-growing western states, such as Ohio, drovers herded their pigs to market on foot along drover's roads. Droves consisted of several hundred pigs and covered only 5 to 8 miles per day. An estimated 40,000 to 70,000 pigs were driven from Ohio to eastern markets every year.

By the early to mid-1800s, railroads had expanded west, and pigs were shipped, rather than driven, to eastern markets. At the same time, Cincinnati, Ohio — known to pig raisers of the day as "Porkopolis" — became a major processing and packing center. By 1850, Cincinnati led the nation in pork processing.

In 1887, Swift & Company developed the refrigerated railroad car, an event that revolutionized the meatpacking industry. Now slaughterhouses could be built close to where pigs were raised, and pork, rather than live pigs, was shipped to market. Stockyards and processing centers popped up in major pork and grain production areas such as Sioux City, Iowa; Chicago; St. Joseph, Missouri; and Kansas City, Missouri.

Confinement operations emerge and dominate. Market pigs were often raised in crowded lots but not comparable to today's intensive conditions, where sows are held in narrow confinement crates for much of their lives and pigs rarely see the light of day. Such operations popped up in the 1960s, when North American big-business farming emerged. Large-scale producers discovered that meat can be produced more economically when animals are raised in closely confined conditions indoors.

Today it is hard to find pork in the grocery store that does not come from a confinement operation. Some of us, however, want to know our meat is raised in humane conditions — and we want flavorful meat. If there aren't any small farmers around that raise pigs, we need to produce the meat ourselves. Pig raising has gone full circle, from backyard pigpen to feedlot to confinement and back again.

Pig Terms

These are the basic, pig-related terms you should know; for more specialized terms, turn to the glossary at the back of this book.

barrow. A castrated male pig

boar. An adult male pig with intact sexual organs

dressing weight. The percentage of a butchered carcass that is usable, compared to live weight

feeder pig. A young pig between 8 and 12 weeks of age, weighing 40 to 60 pounds

feral pig. A wild pig descended from domestic stock

gilt. A female pig that has not yet given birth

grower pig. A pig weighing between 40 and 260 pounds that is being fed to slaughtering weight

market hog or market pig. A pig that weighs 220 to 250 pounds (market weight) and is ready for slaughter — also referred to as a butcher hog or butcher pig

piglet. An infant pig, from birth to about 8 weeks of age

runt. The smallest piglet in a litter

shoat. A weaned, adolescent pig

sow. An adult female pig

trotters. Pigs' feet

wallow. A water-filled tank, children's wading pool, or depression in the ground where pigs cool off in warm weather

weanling or weaner. A recently weaned pig

CHAPTER 2

Physiology and Behavior

These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of sound achieved by the pig.

— Alfred Hitchcock

Pigs have thick bodies, slender legs, short necks, and large heads. A distinctive feature is the pig's snout — a feature strengthened by an internal prenasal bone called the rostral bone, with a flat disc of cartilage at the tip that's shaped like an upside-down heart.

Because of the way pigs are built, it's next to impossible to force a pig to do something he'd rather not. Factor in porcine intelligence and the fact that panicky pigs can quickly die of porcine stress syndrome (see page 130 ->), and the stage is set for disaster unless you know what makes pigs tick. If you do, you can work with a minimum of fuss to pig and person.

Pig Intelligence

Though some would like to think of pigs as dumb animals or animated pork chops, studies have found that in truth they're the Einsteins of the farm animal world.

Pigs can learn to use mirrors. Scientists believe this is a sign of complex cognitive processing and a somewhat sophisticated awareness. Consider a study conducted by Dr. Donald M. Broom and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge in England. They began by exposing eight 4- to 8-week-old piglets to a mirror and recording their reactions. The piglets crept up to the mirror, hesitated, grunted, nuzzled their images, studied themselves from various angles, and looked behind it. They largely ignored the mirror when exposed to it on a second occasion.

Next, they added a bowl of food that couldn't be directly seen but whose image was reflected in the mirror. On spotting the food reflected in the mirror, all but one turned away and found the food in an average of 23 seconds. A control group of piglets that weren't previously introduced to mirrors looked behind the mirror for the bowl of food.

Pigs have preferences, problem-solving skills, and good memories. Scientists at the University of Illinois determined that pigs have temperature preferences, and they can learn through trial and error how to turn on the heat in a cold barn and turn it off again when they are too warm.

"They're known to work in pairs to maneuver the latches and gates of their pens. Once they figure out how to open the gates, they'll do so repeatedly," says Ken Kephart, a Penn State professor of animal science who has spent more than 20 years working with pigs.

Tests also show that pigs remember where food is stored, even if it's hidden. In instances where food was hidden in multiple locations, they first retrieved the food that they liked the best.

Pigs can quickly learn their names and respond to training. The late Dr. Stanley Curtis, formerly of Penn State and the University of Illinois, conducted many studies of pigs, including one in which he put a ball, a Frisbee, and a dumbbell in front of several pigs and taught them to jump over, sit next to, or fetch any of the objects on command; they could still do it 3 years later. He also taught pigs to play video games by moving the joystick with their snouts. "Pigs," he says, "are able to focus with an intensity I have never seen in a chimp."

Consider the talented pigs that portrayed Arnold Ziffel of Green Acres and Babe, the sheepherding pig of movie fame. Or Sue, a Kunekune pig named after the hero in the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue." Kept by Wendy Scudamore of Herefordshire, England, Sue taught himself basic dog agility moves by watching Scudmore's 12-year-old daughter train her dog. Pigs are bright, and with kind handling they develop charming personalities.

The Five Senses

Like us, pigs perceive their environment through five senses: sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch.

Sight

Pigs' eyes are small and deeply set — hence the term "pig-eyed" when applied to humans, horses, and dogs. Because of the placement of their eyes on the side of the head, pigs have wide-angle vision in the neighborhood of 310 degrees and binocular vision of 35 to 50 degrees. They do, however, have a blind spot immediately behind them; to avoid startling a pig, approach from the side or front.

The jury is out on whether pigs see in color, but the presence of rods and cones in their eyes suggests that they do. Researchers believe pigs see some but not all colors, though they disagree on which colors pigs see.

Smell

A pig's remarkable snout encompasses the middle of his upper lip. The snout is a floating disc of cartilage tied to muscle, which allows it to be moved in any direction and to be used as a shovel. It's supported by the pig's rostral bone, a structure unique to swine.

Pigs have an acute sense of smell. Piglets recognize their mother and their teat position (I'll talk about teat position in just a bit) by scent. Older pigs recognize each other in much the same manner. In one study, sows identified which of otherwise identical cards they had touched hours earlier, even after the cards had been washed.

Feral pigs use scent to locate food and to mark territories. Researchers established that feral pigs are most attracted to the scents of rancid fish meal and oil, cod liver oil, spoiled chicken, and petroleum.

Pigs' sense of smell is so acute that truffle hunters use pigs to locate that precious fungus in the ground. But once a truffle pig scents his quarry, the hunter must be quick, because pigs love truffles too.

Taste

Pigs, reportedly, have a preference for sweets. In a study published in the Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition, scientists tested 60 artificial sweeteners, finding that the same 35 sweeteners most humans prefer were also most attractive to pigs. Another study found that, in addition to sweets, pigs also like meaty and cheese flavors.

Hearing

Pigs' ears are oval with pointed tips and a wide base attached to the upper part of their heads. They hang down over the faces of some breeds and stand erect in others.

The hearing range of pigs is similar to that of humans. They locate specific sounds by moving their heads. Pigs hate sudden loud noises, including yelling; it increases their heart rate, so use your normal speaking voice when working with pigs. In addition to body language, pigs communicate through a range of vocalizations (see box opposite).

Touch

Touch and bodily contact are important to pigs. They seek out and enjoy physical contact and lie close together when resting. They also enjoy contact with people they know. Tame pigs like to be scratched behind the ears and shoulders and happily roll over for a brisk belly rub.

Pig Hierarchies

In the wild, herds of feral pigs, called sounders, consist of several sows and their offspring; boars aren't permanently attached to sounders and remain solitary or form bachelor groups. Raised under natural conditions, domestic pigs form similar groupings.

There are two types of social order in swine: teat order and dominance hierarchy.

Teat Order

Sows have four to seven pairs of teats, which is usually sufficient to feed an average litter of piglets. Newborn piglets nurse randomly. However, 4 to 6 hours after birth, they scope out a favorite teat and then, barring being ousted by a stronger sibling, nurse at that station until weaning. Occasionally, piglets in small litters suckle two adjacent teats.

Stronger piglets claim anterior teats (the ones close to their mother's front legs), as these give considerably more milk. Piglets nuzzling anterior teats trigger milk letdown, whereas piglets nuzzling posterior teats near the sow's hindquarters do not.

Sows control milk letdown, and milk flows for only 10 to 20 seconds. The average nursing interval is less than one hour, so piglets normally receive more than 24 feedings a day.

A sow invites her piglets to nurse by rolling onto her side and slowly grunting. She grunts faster and faster as piglets assemble and nuzzle her teats, begin slowly suckling, and then settle down to suckling in earnest. As the milk flow subsides, the grunting rate slows. After feeding, piglets continue dry-suckling the teats for a short interval, then the sow and her piglets usually sleep.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Homegrown Pork"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Sue Weaver.
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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