Your Thoughts

Your Thoughts by Lisa Corcoran

The Sandy Pig

We relocated over 300 miles from Kent to County Durham in 2016 to live the dream and own our own piece of land, we found our smallholding and moved in November 2017.

Andy and I wanted to be pig keepers for a long time. Andy’s family and my grandmother had kept pigs in the past and I had worked with pigs when I was in my late teens. It was a natural progression. After some research we decided to go with the Oxford Sandy and Black breed, they seemed a perfect fit for our situation, so in the April we managed to source three weaners in North Yorkshire and after a fair drive home they arrived. That was that, OSB’s have lived on our holding ever since.

We made a rookie mistake, haven’t we all, and kept one of the gilts from the weaners then also purchased another OSB sow the summer of that year. Both were not of breeding standard, we bred from them both in 2018 and had two litters in early 2019. Both of these litters sold as meat weaners and we kept a couple for ourselves. The one that our youngest daughter fell in love with is still here and had a litter of her own this year.

We decided that breeding was something we wanted to do to conserve this wonderful breed and with the help of the OSBPG Foundation Charity, Florence our lovely Lady sow joined us in 2021 and after hiring a pedigree boar, she had her first litter in February this year. What a wonderful mother she turned out to be. We ended up with 9 beautiful piglets from her, 7 of which were reserved and went to new homes at 8 weeks old leaving us with two boars that we are growing on for a bit.

This year another pig joined our small herd Marji a Clarissa gilt. We plan to hire a boar and get Flo and Marji in pig in the very near future for February farrowing which is very exciting for us all.

We were also featured in the Northern Echo and Northern Farmer magazine, highlighting that we currently keep the only Oxford Sandy and Black pedigree pigs in Durham which all goes towards raising the breed profile and the wonderful work of the OSBPG Charity. The photos of the piglets went down a treat.

We have lived in the property for 5 years and are getting used to the land. For the last four years our pigs have lived out all year, but over recent years we have had flooding in a few of our paddocks and we have also been hit badly with snow and .storm Arwen also took out a tree in the wooded paddock, luckily in the opposite direction of the ark. The pigs have all coped remarkably well.

Last year in Summer we converted two existing outbuildings into Winter housing/farrowing pens, which were a great asset. We are now in the process of converting a further two which will allow us to bring all our pigs in this Winter. We are also just starting to sell our produce which we have a waiting list of orders for which is all very exciting and positive, we think it helps that we have a bridleway that runs through our land, and we often talk to villagers who stop and admire the pigs and can see how they are reared. We can't wait to see what 2023 brings to our smallholding!