Raising Kunekune for pork
A lot of people think that Kunekunes are purely ‘pet’ pigs and as such, can’t be eaten. There’s also a common misconception that the meat is incredibly fatty and it doesn’t taste as good as other breeds. All of these ideas are, quite frankly, completely untrue. What is true however is that Kunekunes are seen primarily as a ‘pet’ pig and often discounted by many who raise their own pigs to supply pork for themselves, or friends and family.
At a time when pig feed prices are at their highest ever, many breeders of larger traditional pigs are giving up and concerns are creeping in over sustainability of supply and ‘food miles’ from importing soya, the lower input, slower growing, grass fed Kunekune has the opportunity to fill a small, pig shaped gap in the market.
The pork produced from Kunekunes is wonderful; succulent and tasty and only fatty if they’ve been overfed on hard feed or given lots of bread and grain, in particular barley. You’ve got to give them time and space to grow, they need to be outdoors to allow them to graze and they cannot be rushed to finish. Okay, so they’re never going to compare to ‘big’ pigs in the growth rate or pork volume stakes. But what they lack in quantity, they more than make up for in other departments.
Pro’s
Low input in terms of bought in feeding
Kunekunes only need 1lb of pig nuts per day and access to grass to allow them to graze.
Easy to manage
Kunekunes are friendly, laid back little pigs, not prone to escaping or destroying housing and fences and absolutely ideal for people who are new to pigs. They are good with children and other stock.
Less damaging to your land
Kunekunes with their smaller trotters and lower weights don’t churn up the ground in the same way bigger pigs do. Any damage tends to be superficial and quicker to recover when compared to that of traditional breeds.
Con’s
It takes longer than a traditional breed
You can’t be assured of a pig that will grow by X amount in X amount of time, they’re slower growing than traditional breeds and you just have to be patient. We find that by 10 or 11 months old they’re well grown and ready to go off.
What we do
We raise all our Kunekunes (except pregnant and nursing females) in exactly the same way - they get 1lb of hard feed (sow rolls @ 16% protein) per day, split into 2 feeds and as much fruit and veg as we have available. In spring and summer they get access to plenty of good grazing, in autumn and winter we supplement their grass ration by feeding hay or haylage and if the weather gets very cold we give some soaked sugar beet pellets too. Beware of over feeding them - it’s incredibly common, but doesn’t do the pig, or your feed & butchery bills any good, you have to be strict with yourself.
We aim to get them to around 65-70Kg (live weight) before sending them to slaughter. For most of our Kunekunes this is somewhere between 10 and 12 months of age, but some don’t grow to quite this size (due to the variations in size, even in the same litter) and have been sent off a little smaller.
We are lucky that we have a small, family run abattoir within 30 minutes drive of our farm. The staff there are incredibly good with the pigs, they understand and mirror the time and care we’ve put in to them while alive. Having anything other than a ‘good death’, after a happy free-range (some would say pampered) life would make me think twice about the whole process. I couldn’t subject my pigs to long uncomfortable journey’s or any stress at the end, so finding a good abattoir, within a reasonable driving time was a deciding factor for us (but this should be true for all pigs - not just Kunekunes).
We treat the carcass in exactly the same way as our traditional pigs, or rather, the butcher does (we sell the excess meat produced to the general public and don’t have licensed premises to do our own cutting & packing)
The loin tends to be cut into chops, we have a few rolled pork joints and some pork steaks/diced pork and the rest is minced and most of it then turned into sausages and burgers - this is only because these are the items most commonly requested by our customers. We have had entire legs cured and turned into hams and the most delicious bacon I’ve ever tasted came from an older gilt, around 20 months old. We’ve also won prizes for sausages made from Kunekune pork (beating rare breed pork and butcher made entries) and have used whole carcasses for hog roasts, with lots of compliments from the diners - to me this shows that the meat is of great quality. I find the pork itself is sweeter and less ‘porky’ than that of other breeds, this is possibly due to the lower percentage of manufactured feed in their diet.
By promoting Kunekune pork, I feel that we as breeders, are actually benefitting the breed in the longer term. Creating the demand for pork creates a ‘need to breed’. Not all gilts in a litter are good enough to be bred from (and shouldn’t be, in my opinion, as it will damage the breed in the longer term) and with sales of pet pigs slowing, we need to find a viable alternative use for these little pigs to ensure they continue to go from strength to strength.
Karen McKay, Yonderton Herd.