2
Jun
2010

Stayin’ Cool

June 2nd, 2010 at 11:12 am by Jill in Green

If you couldn’t sweat, how would you stay cool when the temperature reads 90 degrees? If you were a pig, you’d do something like this:

Pigs cool off by taking a mud bath, much like rhinos and elephants. The water slowly evaporates, cooling them like your sweat cools you. With their wooly coats, the Mangalitsas seem to benefit even more from their mud than their bristley counterparts–the wool collects and holds even more mud. That works out great as long as you don’t mind looking like this:

Mark sometimes puts a sprinkler on so the fellas can cool off (not unlike children), but they’ve also perfected the art of holding the drinking spouts open to create a wallow. The biggest Mangalitsas can even disconnect the hose from the water station so that it makes a great mud hole. And lots of excitement.

Jill

Comments

Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake Said,
I love seeing these updates. I hope some day to end up smallholding like you folks are doing, so thanks for the inspiration!

I’m curious about the Mangalitsa pigs, everything I’ve researched has said that the only owner of breeding stock is Wooly Pigs in WA, and they’re not sharing (which they themselves claim). Are you raising their piglets, or has someone else broken the US monopoly? If it’s a trade secret, I understand
Jill Said,
You read right that the only breeder was Wooly Pigs…until this past winter when an investor did bring in a few blond Mangalitsas for breeding. We’ve got 3 females and a male of the animals imported. They haven’t been bred yet as they were only weaners when they sailed the seas from Austria, but we’re looking forward to piglets in late fall or early spring, depending on how they mature and become ready to breed.

There’s a lot of concern with protecting the integrity of the breed as it’s gaining a foothold in the market. It makes a difference to the trained eye when another breed is bred in–the animals perform a bit differently and the quality of the carcass is not the same. That’s why Heath Putnam has not parted with breeding stock and why the other investor is wanting to build his herd and get a solid market before he considers selling any breeding stock. The “Americanization” of the breed could be its undoing here. They are very unique and a lot of fun after raising as many “American industrial” hogs as we have!