Gloucestershire Old Spots

It was a smallholder's pig, and what it ate says everything about the system it belonged to: whey from the dairy, windfall apples from the orchard, and the pressings left over from making cider. Hence the nicknames, cottage pig and orchard pig. English folklore has it that the black spots are bruises from apples falling on their backs.

The actual ancestry is lost. The breed appears in English writing around 1790, and the likeliest parents are the original Gloucestershire pig, a large off-white animal with floppy ears and wattles, and the unimproved Berkshire, sandy with prick ears and black spots. Both are extinct. The Lincolnshire Curly Coat may have contributed too, and it is extinct as well.

Pedigree records began in 1885, and the Breed Society formed in 1913, organized to protect the breed from government licensing plans; no other pedigreed spotted breed was recorded before then, which is why the Old Spot holds the title. The breed peaked after the First World War, declined with the postwar move to intensive production, and neared extinction in Britain in 1977. Twenty piglets imported to Maine by the Kelmscott Farm Foundation in 1995 refounded the American population, and Gloucestershire Old Spots of America was established in 1996.

White with clearly defined black spots, and at least one spot is required for registry. The lop ears will almost cover the face of a mature pig and hang towards the nose. Boars reach about 600 pounds and sows 500. The standard asks for a long, level back with well sprung ribs, a broad loin, and at least 14 well-placed teats.

Docile and intelligent, and rated for beginner to intermediate keepers. Sows are prolific and very devoted mothers.

Meat and lard: loin, roasts, ham, bacon and sausage. It is a pasture pig for diversified farms, and the old orchard-and-dairy job still fits it exactly.

Ground to forage. What survived the breed's history is thrifty, hardy, good at foraging roots and vegetation, and a very good mother; give it the orchard, the pasture and the scraps the system was built on.

Threatened on the Conservation Priority List. Globally there are fewer than 2,000 animals, with fewer than 1,000 registered breeding females in the UK and fewer than 200 annual registrations in the US; preservation work in Britain has carried royal support.

Ask for the registration. Gloucestershire Old Spots of America keeps the American herd book, and the one-spot minimum is part of the standard, so an unspotted white pig is not an Old Spot. The temperament makes this a genuinely workable first pig, but the ears over the eyes mean you announce yourself, and the lard-type finish means the market is direct sales, not the commodity buyer.

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