Ossabaw Island

The received story is that they are Spanish. DNA complicates it. Mitochondrial DNA, which passes only down the female line, points instead to the Canary Islands, a standard resupply stop on the way west, and to pigs there that carried Asian influence. Iberian pig mitochondrial DNA shows only European ancestry. Paternal-line work still needs doing before anyone can say how the three populations relate.

The island has been owned by the State of Georgia and managed by the Department of Natural Resources as a preserve since 1978. Mainland herds have been established since the 1980s; the last animals came off the island in 2002, and disease rules, vesicular stomatitis and pseudorabies among the island swine, now bar any more from leaving.

Centuries on a barrier island shrank them: the trait is called insular dwarfism. The Conservancy puts boars at 250 to 300 pounds and sows at 150 to 250, and notes it varies among lines and in captivity; on the island itself animals run smaller, under 200 pounds and under 20 inches tall.

They are black or black spotted, heavy in the head and shoulders, with long, slightly dished snouts and heavy bristles. Island life also left a metabolic mark: they tolerate high-salt diets, store fat exceptionally well, and under a constant food supply can run to obesity and a prediabetic condition, which is why they serve as a research model for diabetes.

Active, and docile if handled when young, is the Conservancy's summary; the breed is also described as intelligent and friendly. It is rated for intermediate keepers.

Meat and lard. The pork goes to heritage and cured-meat markets, suckling barbecue and charcuterie, and the breed's other job is science, as the model animal for studying fat storage and diabetes.

Foraging ground and an extensive system; they excel at feeding themselves. Feed is the management problem: under constant rations they store excess fat and can turn prediabetic, so keep them working for their living.

The Ossabaw is Critical on the Conservation Priority List and is included in Slow Food's Ark of Taste. With the island closed as a source, the mainland herds are the whole future of the breed off the island.

There is no breed association; The Livestock Conservancy itself is the breed's point of contact. Island stock and captive-bred stock are not the same thing, and no new stock can come off the island, so ask which line you are looking at and how it traces.

Size your expectations to the animal: this is a small, slow, fat-storing hog for heritage markets, not a commercial carcass.

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