Choctaw

The Oklahoma population exists because of forced removal. Choctaw families moved livestock to the Oklahoma Territory in the early 1800s, and in the 1830s the United States government forced the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole out of Mississippi and Alabama to Oklahoma. Their hogs went with them; an Oklahoma Choctaw will from 1858 already lists hogs at the home place. Today's Choctaw hogs descend from those herds and have changed little in 150 years.

For most of that history they were range animals. They were turned loose to forage, herded when needed with Catahoula Leopard dogs, and fattened on corn only when an animal was wanted for market.

They are small. The Livestock Conservancy puts adults of both sexes at 120 to 150 pounds, and they are quick, athletic pigs with heavy forequarters. Usually black, but found in solid and spotted colors; a true Choctaw has no belt and no striped piglets.

Ears sit erect to slightly drooping, many animals carry fleshy wattles on the neck, and the toes are fused into a single mule-like hoof. The wattles and the hoof both point back to Spanish ancestry.

The Conservancy lists the temperament as aggressive and rates the breed for intermediate to experienced keepers. That is the range animal talking: pigs raised in confinement can become very tame, but this is not a breed that has been selected for docility, and it should not be anyone's first pig.

Meat. The historical system was subsistence: the hogs ranged free, fed themselves, and were taken as needed. The Conservancy's note on the breed is that it has qualities that may be important in the future, which is a genetics argument as much as a meat one.

Range. This is a foraging hog from open country, and its keepers have always run it that way. Budget for fencing that holds a quick, athletic animal and for handling experience to match the temperament.

The breed is Critical on the Conservation Priority List. The population is down to a few hundred animals at most, concentrated in the counties of southeast Oklahoma that were once part of the Choctaw Nation, and conservation work is trying to grow it.

There is no breed registry, so there are no papers. What stands in for them is provenance: where the herd runs, how long it has been kept, and whether the animals show the breed's markers, the wattles and the fused hoof.

Do not confuse them with Mulefoot hogs, which share the hoof but diverged into a separate breed, or with the Pineywoods Rooter and other mixed feral populations.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.