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Gloucester Old Spot pigs
Fordhall’s pigs live free range where they enjoy rooting and rummaging amongst the undergrowth. Their feed is supplemented with a GM free, vegetarian cereal mix (not organic).
Our pigs use buildings or arcs for shelter. They allow the pigs to wander in and out to the paddocks as they wish. We use purpose built pig arcs, or our old military buildings that still remain on the farm (and are pretty solid, if not pretty!).
We rear Gloucester Old Spot crossed pigs and occasionally have other heritage breeds including Saddlebacks, Middle Whites, and Tamworths. Our native Gloucester Old Spots and heritage breeds mature slower than the commercial breeds, which allows flavour to build, something that shouldn’t be missed.
In most of the pig paddocks we have apple trees which provide shelter in the summer from the sun, and also provide fruit for the pigs to forage on in autumn.
Our pigs live next to our picnic area as everyone seems to love watching them. If you’re lucky, you may see some piglets too! We do have one sow who has learnt to tug on the apple tree branches in autumn to shake the fruit from the trees. It's impressive to watch!!
Matching the demands of the butchery with the supply available on the farm is a tricky job. We rear enough Gloucester Old Spot pigs to fulfil the farm shop and online shop demand. This works well - juggling the pigs not getting too fat and always having enough to keep up with busy periods. Occasionally we will buy some Gloucester Old Spot weaners from the local market if we think we will have a gap. An example situation is where a sow goes barren and doesn’t get pregnant, or if a sow loses a litter of piglets This unfortunately does occasionally happen, especially with the weather we get in the UK.
While demand in the farm shop uses up most of the fresh pork from the heritage pigs we rear, we do not always have spare pork shoulders to make sausages. If this happens, to keep up with sausage supplies, we buy gilts and sows from local farmers through the local cattle market. We try and buy Gloucester Old Spots as often as we can. We actually prefer them to be smaller and a bit leaner so we can fatten them up here at the farm in our paddocks with our own feed. These pigs stay on the farm in the paddock near the farm shop which you can see from the carpark. You can often see them wallowing in the mud when you visit the shop.
