The Tamworth Breeders’ Club Summer 2010 Volume 5, Issue 1 TamworthTamworth Tamworths - The future’s orange! TrumpetTrumpet

Upcoming Happenings

utumn is a special time and the Tamworth Breeders’ Club have much going on to keep you Inside this issue: A involved in the run-up to winter. Firstly, at the Royal Berkshire & Newbury Show just off the M4 motorway, there will be the judging of the Champion of Champions for the Tamworth breed. This 1 takes place on Sunday 19th September and it is hoped to see as many qualifiers - winners of the Breed Championships at this season’s leading shows - there competing for the greatest accolade. The judge Tamworth Trifles 2 this year is Mrs Viki Mills from Devon who has been a stalwart of the Tamworth breed for many years, Chairman’s Message 3 (see the Winter 2007 edition of Tamworth Trumpet ). Then there’s the submission of applica- The Rufforth Herd 4 tions please for the annual Points Compe- Piggy Vet’s Tale 5 tition to determine the of the Year 2010. A form is enclosed which The Finest 6 please complete and return to Carolyn before the due date shown on it. If you A Fitting End 7 don’t return the completed form, your Transport Regulations 8 prize-winning pig won’t be considered! It’s up to you! Show Round-Up 9-10 Lastly, but probably most importantly, it’s Successful Breeding 11-12 our AGM and Members’ Day on Sunday October 17th. This year we are most for- Memories of a Pig- 13-15 tunate to have been invited to the Cots- Keeping Man wold Farm Park for the day by BBC Letter from Carolyn 16 Countryfile presenter and Tamworth breeder, Adam Henson. BPA Show & Sale of Now AGMs are generally considered to Pedigree Pigs be stuffy, dry occasions where nothing

much changes and po-faced officials read Ross-on-Wye Market, Herefordshire boring reports telling you nothing new. (at end of M50) But it doesn’t have to be like that! Come along and join in. Read Carolyn’s letter on page 16 - the Club Sat Oct 2nd is looking to grow and develop and needs your help to do so. Come and maybe stand for Committee and help drive the Club forward and make Tamworths even more successful than they are now. This is 5 Tamworths entered to everyone’s advantage so please, give a little time and let us hear your thoughts and ideas. It’s going to a great day out, you’ll meet lots of great people and have an exclusive tour round the first and best Rare Breeds Centre in the country. Tamworth Trumpet Finally, just a word about what’s inside this issue. Your Chairman has worked tirelessly to secure so Help spread the many interesting articles from the likes of Charles Campion, Jereme Darke, Nick Framcis and Geoff word—recruit a new Wilson. Then there’s contributions from others such as Sue Fildes raising interestimg new information member at every about the transport regulations which could help many small breeders, Nick Hargrave with very practi- opportunity. cal advice about how to get the best from your breeding and a fascinating look back at how things were done in the past through the eyes of Eric Freeman. A whole host of information to enjoy! Pa ge 2 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

Tamworth Trifles by Dreamboy

t is not often we see farm dispersal sales including significant numbers of I pigs - let alone traditional breeds but such happened at Sarah Harris' Long Burton herd near Sherborne in Dorset back in early July. Unfortunately, Sarah retired from major farming which is a great shame as we will lose a great pro- ponent of Tamworth pork marketing. The great news was, however, the prices which the dispersal attracted with a top price of £350 guineas and some excel- lent prices in the late 200s showing an average of £170 guineas all through including young stock. The car park was packed and gates and fencing stakes fetched as much or more as they would new in the local agricultural mer- chants!!

Liz Shankland had a very exciting Royal Welsh show with her sow not only winning the Tamworth Breed Championship but also the Traditional Breed Championship. Liz was understandably absolutely over the moon particularly as she had had a disappointing sea- son thus far owing to circumstances beyond her control. Keep it up Liz!! I know you will be a force to be reckoned with for many years to come.

I hear Viki Mills is still very much a driving force in pigs even though it is behind the scenes. She has been sorting out all the trophies which were in BPA control and given out at the Royal. As she quite rightly says, it would be a pity if they just gathered dust in the office at . She has recently celebrated a huge milestone with her daughter Abigail's 50th birthday party. The family was joined from America by Abigail's famous impresario father, Richard Pilbrow, who brought to the West End so many famous musi- cals from America such as Fiddler on the Roof in association with Hal Prince.

It is great to experience the enthusiasm of James Sage, one of our latest showing recruits in the Tamworth breed. On his first outing with a Tamworth at this year's Three Counties, he won 1st in the July gilt class and Reserve Breed Champion. Let's hope this will be the first of many great successes for James who has written an article for the Trumpet this month.

There's no stopping the ebullient and determined Scotsman - or in this case Scotswoman!!! When the committee decided to appoint Lillian as Tamworth representative for Scotland, little did we realise what a huge impact this would make. Lillian is a very determined lady and has spread her enthusiasm to the BPA and now organises the pig demonstrations at the Royal Highland Show. This hasn't had pig classes for very many years and most people have given up on them ever being reinstated - that of course was before the arri- val of Lillian on the scene. She is bound and determined to persuade the show to reinstate these classes and knowing Lillian well I don't give out much hope for the Royal Highland in long term resistance - watch this space!!! She has continued as you will see from her article to promote our breed at various other shows around Scotland including the Royal Highland - and all this without a penny from the main coffers of the club!!!

I was amused to hear that our editor, Richard Lutwyche, was called in at short notice to commentate at the final of the pig of the year at the Great Yorkshire Show. This was because the regular commentator pulled out as he didn't feel he had been officially invited to do it. Luckily Richard was around, as he only had three minutes notice! I hear he did a brilliant job as always.

When the Royal finally exited our scene last year, that wonderful trophy "The Ruffoth" cup reverted to its presenters, the Wilson family from Yorkshire They had won it many times over the years and fully de- served to keep it in perpetuity. I hear they have very generously offered to contribute a replacement the value of which would be up to £500 should the Royal re-establish pig classes at any time in the future!

Rufforth Royal won the RASE Breed Championship at Windsor in 1954. Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1 Pa ge 3

Message from your Chairman by Nick Hunkin

ot a great year for the Hunkins personally this year as Liz was fighting cancer for most of it. The great news is that she is in full remission and the consultant N "doesn't expect to see her again". Unfortunately, while she was being treated, she came across three other people she knew, all of whom died. It brought it across to us how lucky we were that she responded to treatment so well. Whilst all this was going on, I gave up full time work to look after her and unfortunately the Shute Vale herd was one of the main casualties. We currently only have 2 pigs and they are being looked after very kindly by a good friend.

Apart from all this, it is good to see that we continue to grow as a breed in numbers and have more than our fair share of new mem- bers. We can only hope that this will be reflected in due course with some more new faces in the show ring, as some of our more established show people are advancing in years and we could do with some replacements!!! It is great to see younger people like James Sage and Roberts and Fairclough come into showing with such enthusiasm - let's hope there'll be a few more. I personally missed the Royal this year - for all its shortcomings, idiosyncrasies and expense, it was still the great national showcase and the show we all aimed to win—a fitting climax to the earlier county shows. It would seem a great pity if this does not get resurrected in some format or another although the signs aren't very promising at the moment.

The great disappointment for 2010 was not to have any pigs forward in the Pig of the Year final at Harrogate. This is the first time this has happened since the Chairman's “The great outburst in his final year as commentator at the Great Yorkshire!! I think all the breeders agree that this year it is certainly not the fault of un-noticing judges but that the standard disappointment for of Julys forward this year was just not good enough. All breeds get years like this and 2010 was not to have let's hope the future bodes better for our July pigs!! Incidentally, statistics show that it is any pigs forward in the easier to qualify on the east side of the country rather than the west!! I cast no aspersions Pig of the Year final at to the quality of pigs in the east but they just don't get the numbers at shows as they do in the west. Harrogate” However, Tamworth life is not just about the show ring (even if it is still the best way to get your pigs noticed) and we did have excellent entries at the Yorkshire, Three counties, Royal Welsh and Hatfield. The great thing is that we continue to impress the buying public with the quality, taste and overall excellence of our Tamworth pork products. We have some outstanding proponents of this in the shape of Caroline Wheatley-Hubbard, the Francis family, Sarah Dodds, Lillian Waddell to mention but a few and on this front at any rate the future is ORANGE!!! There is no doubt we have something very special about the taste and eating quality of Tam- worth pork and we must keep pushing this in all places and at all times. Let's hope that the warnings given about the 2010 world grain harvest don't come to fruition and feed prices don't again rocket - we could all do without it!!

Don't forget the 2nd year of the Tamworth Champion of Champions at Newbury—should be an exciting event!!! OAP—Old Aged Pig!

All my best wishes.

Nick

This is Bellevue Glen aged 11 years on 7th May this year. Bred at Belfast Zoo, he is still going strong at Newbridge House, Dublin. Details sup- plied by Vaughan Byrne. Seemingly there’s a mar- ket for cheesewire in Ireland! Pa ge 4 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

The Rufforth Herd of Tamworth Pigs by Geoff Wilson

he herd based at Rufforth near York in North Yorkshire started in T 1926 but the pedigree breeding commenced in 1928 with original stock bought from the Earl of Harewood. The founder of the Rufforth herd was TR Wilson, my grandfather, who was then joined by T W Wilson, my father and was subsequently continued by myself. The herd was then kept continuously until the mid 1990s. Over the years, the herd won many breed championships including over 12 at the Royal Show. We travelled to many other shows including the Royal Lancashire, Great Yorkshire, and Staffordshire. Whilst keeping the breed Tamworths were exported from our herd to Geoff Wilson judging the Tamworth classes at this year’s America, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, Borneo and Spain. Great Yorkshire Show. During the difficult years when numbers were low the breed was kept going by a hard core of “…. the herd won breeders including Berkswell Herd; the Wheatley Hubbard family, Blackridings Herd; S Bourne many breed & Co, Edingale Herd; E J Holland and of course the Rufforth Herd. There have been other good support- championships ers of the breed over the years and it is very pleasing including over 12 to see good numbers currently. at the Royal I have always been interested in Tamworth Pigs as Show.” long as I can remember, my first recollection of showing was at the age of 8 at the Royal Lancashire Show, Stanley Park, Blackpool, the marquee blew Rufforth Knight was the RASE Breed down that had the stockman’s cubicles in it! In Yorkshire we would call that sort of wind bracing! I then attended many shows including exhibiting at the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Champion at Blackpool in 1953. Shows & Sales where in 1980 we had the Interbreed Champion. The most consistent show success was with the “Lucky Lass” family; this family originated from a gilt “Star’s Lassy” which was imported from Canada in the 1930s. Maple was another female line and Yorkshireman a male line that appeared prominently in the breeding. Whilst I do not currently keep pigs as I am actively involved in our Engi- neering and Training businesses. I have said when I retire (I am now 60!) I would start keeping Tamworths again but I can’t run as fast as I did. I A lovely looking sow, Rufforth Brilliant Girl. am delighted to be on the Tamworth breed Judges’ list and it was an hon- our to judge the Tamworths at this year’s Great Yorkshire Show where I was pre- sented with a rosebowl for 50 years service to the pig industry. Rufforth Lucky Lass 5, Royal Show Breed Champion in 1965.

Our Editor has a new book out in time for Christmas. Higgledy Piggledy. Published by Quiller Publishing it looks at the many ways that the pig has influenced our lives through culture, lan- guage, art and much more. Things as diverse as Slang & Cant, Sayings, Quotations, Pigs on Inn Signs, Pigs that Rock and Piggy People. All interspersed with fascinating stories about pigs and their impact on our history and culture.

Available from all the usual places (are there any bad book shops?) or through the GOS website www.oldspots.org.uk.

Hardback, 128pp with colour photos and illustrations, £14.99 Pa ge 5 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

A Piggy Vet’s Tale by Jerome Darke

am a farmer’s son from south Devon who qualified as a veterinary surgeon in 1990. I have always had an I interest in pigs and find them to be fascinating and very intelligent creatures. My grandfather always kept a few weaner pigs to fatten and my uncle had an outdoor herd. I spent three weeks ‘work experience’ placed on a large outdoor unit – this is probably where my veterinary interest in pigs really started. I came to Crewkerne to work as a newly qualified vet and am pleased to say I stayed working in the same area – now being a director of Synergy Farm Health which is a Large Animal (Farm) Veterinary Practice based at Evershot. There were several commercial pig herds in the practice back in the 90s and I soon became proficient at blood sampling! Breeding pigs sold for export had to be tested free for Brucellosis. Pigs were caught using a snare or ‘snickle’ and blood collected from the base of the neck. Ear defenders and knee pads were essential equipment! One of my bosses reminded me that bleeding pigs was a young man’s job and this pushed me into pig veterinary medicine. I learned much from experienced pig men. Sadly today, many of these herds are no more and the density of commercial herds in our area is very light indeed. Further to my introduction I thought I would outline a few principles of husbandry, handling and disease which every pig owner should be aware of. Firstly remember that pigs are single stomached – like ourselves. They can digest fibre but this happens in the hind gut. They need a supply of readily digestible feed. Weaning age on commer- cial units has been pushed down to minimum limits over the years. Ideally piglets should be at least 6 weeks of age before being weaned. Their digestive tract needs to develop and a milk based diet in the early weeks ensures that they get off to a good start. As dry feed is introduced make sure changes are gradual. Pigs can be fed on liquid feed (e.g. whey) but sourcing may be an “… a supply of readily digestible issue for smaller units. feed. Photo by Richard Lutwyche Also of paramount importance is a continual sup- ply of fresh clean water. Care particularly in hot weather that supplies are sufficient and in very cold weather that pipes do not freeze up! Water requirements of lactating sows or gilts will be high too. Pigs need shelter – from the cold, wet, and sunshine if lacking pigment. Outdoor sys- tems work well in the summer but must drain well to sustain pigs in the winter. Care too if outdoor reference predators – foxes in particular can take a whole litter of pig- lets. Good electric fencing can help. “Pigs need shelter… “ Buildings must be well ventilated but not be draughty. Consider drainage too. The bed- ded area should be distinct, (you can use straw or shavings), with a good loafing area. Photo by Carolyn MacInnes Pigs are clean animals and if sufficient room will keep beds clean and use loafing spots for defaecating/urinating. Know your pig! Get used to what a normal healthy pig does and how it behaves. This aids in detecting the early signs of disease. Handling the pig is easiest when they are tiny (if you’re quick!). Grab them by the back leg and be positive. They are slippery creatures and cannot be held once they are older! Ideally a walled pen with a swinging gate to trap them behind is useful. Pig boards assist with moving from A to B. Remember though they are strong and can run too. Remember that pigs have teeth and can be dangerous. The older boar or the sows with piglets are ones to be wary of. Generally however most are friendly and are probably look- ing for feed! If planning to expand your unit… Signs of disease generally include loss of appetite/changes to normal activity. Bacterial Photo by Richard Lutwyche infections can be common. A serious bacterial disease caused by infective spores in soil is Erysipelas. This can be controlled with a vaccine. Sick pigs respond best to treatment if caught early. Outdoor pigs should be regu- larly wormed. Parasitic skin disease occurs and is treated relatively easily. If in doubt, I suggest you seek professional advice. If planning to keep pigs or expand your unit – you need to plan ahead and make sure you have sufficient facilities. Keeping and working with pigs can be great fun. JJ Darke BVetMed CertCHP MRCVS, Synergy Farm Health, West Hill Barns, Evershot, Dorset, DT2 0LD. Pa ge 6 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

Producing the Finest Pork; Choose Tamworth by Nick Francis

een to get hold of some top-quality pork, my K brother and I bought two Tamworth gilts in the spring of 2007. Five months later, having butchered them on our kitchen table, we were treated to the most amazing, full-flavoured, succulent pork. It was a revelation, pork that tasted like nothing we’d tried before. Having thoroughly enjoyed not just the pork but also the fantastic character of Tamworth pigs, we bought a couple of in-pig sows. We farrowed them down and raised 16 piglets. With far more pork than we could eat ourselves we approached friends, butchers, pubs and restaurants to sell our produce. Again, it went down a storm. This was the start of Paddock Farm and now, two years later, we’ve got 40 pedigree Tamworth sows and a loyal and growing following of top chefs. We’re now slaughtering every week, delivering direct to restaurants, and we’ll soon be producing around 500 Tamworth porkers per year. Having started Paddock Farm in the small paddock at the end of our par- ents’ garden – hence the farm name – we now rent woodland, pasture and arable land from local landowners to raise our herd. We run a very exten- sive outdoor farm, farrowing, raising and finishing the pigs in large free- range paddocks. We believe that by raising pedigree Tamworth pigs as naturally as possible, allowing them to root, roam and forage, we can pro- duce the best tasting pork. And we’ve now got a good number of chefs who’ll testify to this. Other rare-breeds will produce great pork too, but the character and fla- vour of the Tamworth stands out. It really does produce the ultimate well-marbled pork, dry-cured bacon and speciality sausages, and as with all good pigs our Tamworths carry a lovely layer of fat. Chefs tell us how much they like the marbling that we achieve on our porkers and they appreciate the value of a good covering of back fat too. The fat that a Tamworth carries may not fit with the commercially-driven lean pork that many people have become used to but good chefs understand the place for good fat. Our porkers kill out at around 65kg deadweight with between 18 and 23mm of back fat. Selling into specialist markets we ensure the same care is taken over the carcasses as is taken over the pigs, so we’ve set up our own butchery facility to handle everything ‘in-house.’ We age our meat properly and butcher it to specification so that each chef and cook can get the most from it. We also make our own range of excellent Tamworth sausages and dry-cured bacon.

The next phase of our development is to make our porkers available online so that we can offer better access to home cooks as well as professional chefs. Hopefully by the time this Trumpet goes to print we’ll be live so please visit our site – www.paddock.fm. Photos supplied by Nick Francis.

Pa ge 7 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

A Fitting End To A Fine Pig by Charles Campion

roitwich is blessed with a very fine butcher's shop, Queen Street D Butchers, run by the irrepressible Andrew Duggan, a man who understands that the conformation of each animal has a huge effect on its eating qualities. Andrew is also fond of a challenge and that is how the great bacon adventure came about. Like all the best stories this one starts with a pig. An enormous pig. She had lived a long and happy life in a sty over towards Tibberton, and by the time she went to slaughter her carcase weighed over 130 kilos without the head! When I asked what breed she was there was a pro- found silence, but looking at the carcass there was probably a good deal of large white in her pedigree. In fact if there were ever to be a pig called the "extra large white" or the "improbably large white" she would have qualified. She was also a pig that had lived well, when queried about her enormous size her owner is supposed to have said - rather defensively – "She was very partial to potatoes". When she got to the abattoir they skinned her to make handling a little easier – the leathery skin would have graced a rhino, it was like armour plate – but one glance at the lavish layer of fat confirmed that this was our opportunity to make some real, old-fashioned, classic bacon. I got to work on one side of her and Andrew Duggan took the other. Naturally there was nothing so vulgar as a com- petition, not with rules and everything, but equally we were both very keen not to be outdone. The first problem was one of size, viewed from the side - eye of bacon through to the streaky in one piece - the "rasher" measured a little over a metre long. Each piece was bulky too, at the "back bacon" end, the eye of the meat was 6cm deep and the back fat added another 6cm. In "old money" this is a piece of meat that was nearly five inches deep! The old girl certainly had magnificent fat, An- drew Duggan made lard by rendering those hunks of back fat that were trimmed away during the butchery. It was exceedingly good. Pure white fat with a low melting point, not a trace of unpleasant pigginess, sweet enough to spread on toast. You can understand why the Italians set such store by Lardo di Colonata (sheets of back fat cured in marble trough for several months with salt and rose- mary). With my portion I set out to make a dry, spicy, bacon. When cooked the eye was to be the meaty foundation for golden crispy crunchy fat. I made up a mixture to dry rub the meat and secured a huge plastic tub for it to sit in. The recipe for the cure was a sim- ple one and inspired by what I had to hand in the back of the store cupboard – 1.5kg cooking salt 1 dessert spoon juniper berries 1 dessert spoon allspice powder 500g Muscavado sugar 12 whole star anise 1 dessert spoon saltpetre 12 cardamom pods 6 large, dried, chillies Bunch after bunch of fresh rosemary I bunged everything except the rosemary into a kitchen liquidiser and whooshed away to mix it thoroughly. You end up with fragrant, (if rather dirty looking), salt. I rubbed the meat with plenty of the salt mix, put the two pieces together with the rosemary in between then laid them in the box and covered them with more of the mix. Then every two days you turn the bacon over and repeat the mas- sage. The difficult thing to judge, especially without practice, is how long to leave the meat in the cure. Andrew Duggan made his bacon with a commercially available curing salt over a period of five or so days and it was delicious – rich and well salted. I left mine in the cure for three weeks! Which, in hindsight may have been a little too long. In my defence I would say that as a novice bacon curer I didn't want to poison anybody and better to be a little salty than deadly dangerous. But next time I try this I will drag the ba- con out a week earlier! Then the bacon needed to dry out. I hung some in a muslin cage in the garage, but another piece that I left in an ordinary domestic refrigerator seems to have got suitably dry and gnarly with much less faffing about. I really enjoyed this bacon. I am a salt addict and it was certainly more salty than commercial dry cure bacon, so it is no surprise that I had some monumentally good bacon sandwiches. With bacon the flavour lies in the fat and this fat crisped up a treat. There is also something very satisfying about hand cut rashers; perhaps because you cannot cut them wafer thin they do have an exceptionally good chew to them. Just grill until very crisp. Now I have the taste for proper bacon we'll be on the lookout for more really enormous, elderly, fat pigs – preferably pigs that are partial to potatoes! Queen Street Butchers, 15 Queen Street , Droitwich, WR9 8LA (01905 772159) Charles Campion is a food writer and restaurant critic for the London Evening Standard and appears regularly on the popular TV show, Masterchef. Pa ge 8 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

Do You Really Need the Certificate of Competence to Transport Your Pigs? By Sue Fildes

he Welfare in Transport (WIT) team, part of the government’s T Animal Health Department, is now centralised in Carlisle. Respon- sible for enforcing the current rules for transportation of animals through- out the UK, they have declared that the transportation legislation does not apply in any form whatsoever so long as there are no more than 4 animals being transported at one time, and so long as there are as many people in the vehicle as there are animals in the lorry or trailer. That’s right, total exemption. They say ‘If you are transporting one animal—one person, (up to a total of 4), then you are exempt from the regulations therefore you don't require a type 1 or a type 2 certificate of competence, journey log or vehicle approval.’ However they have not promoted this exemption, which could be so im- portant to producers of animals selling breeding stock to purchas- ers over 65km away: a single animal exemption was mentioned buried in the 53-page booklet of general guidance on the regulations but even that exemp- tion was and is still omitted completely from current species specific book- Four pigs could be transported, so long as there are four lets like ‘Welfare of Animals during transport - Advice for transporters of pigs’. people in the car, according to an exemption in the legisla- tion that has been explicitly defined by the ‘Welfare in The WIT team says ‘The current version of the 'Welfare of Animals During Transport Main Guidance' document makes no mention of the 4 animal Transport’ team. limit, however, we are working on a revised version which is likely to be pub- lished imminently at which time this document will be updated on the website…. The (other) publications that you refer to were pro- duced by Defra and are outwith Animal Health’s ability to revise. However, I have passed your comments on to Animal Welfare team within Defra.’ The reason for the exemption has been declared as follows: ‘The current welfare during transport rules (Council Regulation EC1/2005 and the Welfare of Animals (Transport) (England) Order 2006) make no mention of exemptions for individual animals. However the exemption has been retained from previous legislation, by Defra, and with Ministerial agreement in order to meet the “Better Regulation” initiatives of this Government, which were in- tended, in part, to reduce the regulatory burden placed on private sector businesses. Defra considered it appropriate to extend the definition of the single animal exemption up to a maximum of four animals (providing each animal was accompanied by a separate individual i.e. for the exemption to apply one person could not be responsible for more than one animal.) However, beyond this, the full weight of the Regulation should apply. Defra have advised that since this exemption stems from the UK Better Regulation initiative and is not referred to within the Com- munity Regulation, other member States are not obliged to respect it. Therefore, anyone intending to transport animals internation- ally should check the requirements for single animal transport with the competent authorities of any Member States that you journey through. I am sorry that the existing welfare during transport guidance is not as clear as it could have been on this point. However, I have con- sulted with a colleague who has been assisting Defra with its revision and he assures me that the single animal exemption is more clearly explained in the revised document, particularly with regard to the limit of 4 animals each accompanied by a separate individual. The revised document will, of course, be publicised via the website.’

By Sue Fildes, pedigree Berkshire pig breeder, who investigated the rules after losing an order for 10 gilts to go to France due to in- terpretation of these regulations.

This article was first published in the Berkshire Breeders’ Club newsletter. Pa ge 9 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

Show Round-Up by Nick Hunkin & Bill Howes

Royal Bath & West Considering that the Bath and West is at the top end of pig shows and had over three hundred pigs entered this year, the Tamworths were very poorly represented for the first time in many years. This was exacerbated by the fact that the show gives us more classes than any other and it is to be hoped that entries return to their normal high level next year. Though down a bit in numbers ,the qual- ity was, on the whole, high. The 1st pig out was Boyton Farm’s Yorkshireman July boar which took 1st prize and also male champion. The subsequent senior sow class was taken by Nick Hunkin’s Princess with Boyton’s Melody in 2nd and Liz Shankland’s Jacqueline in 3rd. The 18 month class went to Nick Hunkin’s Princess 810 with July honours going to Boyton’s Maple. The September class was won by Boyton’s Rita in 1st and 2nd places. Unfortunately there were no Januarys forward. Breed and female champion went to Nick Hunkin’s Princess senior sow and reserve breed and female to the same exhibitor’s 18 month Princess. The judge, Patricia Horsely, declared herself well satisfied with the quality.

Three Counties It was back to the glory days at the Three Counties show this year with well over 200 pigs entered - something not seen at Malvern for over 10 years. The Tamworths were in fine fettle with a very strong entry and most pigs forward. The weather held up well with good sunshine on every day. First out was the July boar and this was won by Barbara Warren with her Yorkshireman, in the subsequent January class, Barbara also won with her Glen boar and went on to take the male honours with the July. The senior sow class was won by Bill and Shirley Howes with their Melody 17th sow.“This In 2nd wasplace was Liz Shankland with her Jacqueline and also with a Jacqui was Barbara Warren in 3rd place. James Sage managed to beat off the competition on his first outing with his July Princess gilt followed up by the Howes’ Dreamboy’s Melody and Golden Rose gilts in 2nd and 3rd places. Finally, Barbara Warren took first with her January Jacqueline gilt. Best of breed and female champ wetmost to the Howes’ enjoyable senior sow with reserve breed and female going to James Sage’s July gilt. Royal to date…” Great Yorkshire This year the Great Yorkshire had the highest number of entries in the Tamworth classes of any show. This may well reflect the growth of new breeders in the north of England—something which is most welcome as it is only a few years ago that the Tamworth classes were amalgamated with AOB through lack of entries. In the event there was a good local presence but this was supplemented by a few breeders from further afield. Quality was generally good, but unfortunately we did not quite manage to qualify for the final of POY held at this show as always. First into the ring were the July boars and this class was won by Roberts and Fairclough with Raisinhall Royal Standard 5th; 2nd was Bill and Shirley Howes with a Golden Ranger boar and 3rd J and C Holding with a Jasper. The January boars were won by Billquay with a nice Yorkshire- man and the overall male champion went to the Royal Standard from Roberts and Fairclough. Next came the females with the senior sow class going to L.M Farrington’s Beechwood Maple 4th, 2nd went to the Howes’ and 3rd to the Farrington’s with a Golden Rose and Lucky Lass GYS Breed Champion, Beechwood Maple 4 respectivly. The Howes’ took the July class with another Golden Rose Photo by Richard Lutwyche with Billquay and Roberts and Fairclough taking 2nd and 3rd respec- tively. The January 1st and 2nd went to Billquay with Rubys and 3rd was Roberts and Fairclough with a Melody. Overall, judge Geoff Wilson was very impressed and went on to give the breed champion to LM Farrington's senior Maple sow and reserve to Roberts and Fairclough’s senior boar. Let’s hope we can keep up the good entry at Yorkshire in future years. These are Bill Howse’s thoughts on attending this year’s Great Yorkshire Show: Having qualified for POY twice and judging Tamwoths last year, we decided, because of the demise of Royal Show, we would ex- hibit at the Great Yorkshire Show this year. We booked an hotel in Harrogate - not too bad and adequate, but the double bed was only just double, had a camber from centre to edge, and I fell out one night! Noisy fans going all night just outside the window and thunderstorms. The company was good, (fellow exhibitors), so we managed very well. Back to the Show. There were, we were told, around 400 pigs there, 23 of which were Tam- worths, with a good representation in each class. Cont…../10 Pa ge 10 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

Show Round-Up continued

The Januarys were penned in the old pens - about as far away from the judging ring as possible, with lots of avenues of escape for a nifty Tammy! There were plenty of helpers, though, so no major runaways, though Ryan Perry had a good gallop round the Stockmens' locker room with his gilt. Congratulations to all prize winners, especially Ryan and Charlotte who both qualified, (with Tamworths), for the final of the Young Handlers to be held at Hatfield in August. Stuart and Jodie came 3rd in the interbreed pairs out of 15 entries. The Tamworths put up a very good show and we look forward to going again next year. The atmosphere and 'buzz' was great - like the Royal used to be! Anyone care to join us? You will be very welcome - lots of camaraderie and cake! We might look for a differ- ent hotel! Bill Staffordshire & Others At the Staffs County Bill and Shirley Howes won 1st and 2nd prize in the any other traditional sow class with their Melody sow and then went on to achieve reserve supreme over all breeds - well done you two! They also took best Tamworth at Newark and Notts county show and at Fillongly in Warwickshire where they were joined by Kathleen Pile. In the west coutry Nick Hunkin took Tam- worth champion at The Royal Cornwall Show and at the Mid Devon in July. Royal Welsh Although the Tamworths are still categorised as Any Other Traditional Breed, such has been the entry over the last few years that we must be close to getting our own classes there. The breed did exceptionally well against all the others with Liz Shankland taking champion traditional with her Lucky Lass sow. With slightly unsettled weather at the show, there was still a near record crowd---the Welsh really do support their national show. The senior boars were 1st in the ring under the watchful gaze of Guy Kiddy and he chose Barbara Warren’s Yorkshireman as overall 1st against the other breeds. In the senior sow class we swept the board with 1st going to Liz Shankland s eventual champion Lucky Lass sow, a direct descendant of Lord Salisbury’s outstanding sow, 2nd also went to Liz with her Jacqueline sow and 3rd to Barbara Warren also with a Jacqueline. As there were several other entries from other breeds, this was an outstanding result. In the 18 month class, Barbara Warren won 1st with a Jacqueline sow. Well done to all those exhibitors and lets keep the Royal Welsh orange! Hatfield House Country Show We had another great entry of Tamworths at Hatfield and were one of the most strongly supported of all the breeds once again this year. The quality was high in the sow classes, but the younger pigs could have been a little better, reflecting what has been a generally disappointing year for us on this front in 2010. As in the POY, we were unable to get into the finals of the YPOY, something we hope will be rectified next year! Amazingly the rain held off, despite mixed forecasts and for the second year in a row it teamed down in the west side of the country but let the south east off relatively lightly with just small smattering here and there. The pig rings were well attended by the public and the behaviour of the Tamworths was exemplary! It was good to see exhibi- tors from far and wide including Billquay from Northum- berland and Roberts and Fairclough from Yorkshire. The Kiddy’s had a good sow and litter on exhibition which attracted much attention from the public and admiration Liz Shankland with Tudful Jacqueline 8, the Breed Champion. Photo by from other non-Tamworth breeders. The senior sow class was won by Liz Shankland with her excellent Tudful Jac- Richard Lutwyche queline 8th, 2nd place went to Billquay Farms Billquay Ruby 196 and 3rd to Shutevale Princess 810 from Nick Hunkin. Much admired in this great class were Raisinhall Melody 8th from Roberts and Fairclough, Cranbrook Ruby from J and A Wormall and Stoneymoor Jscqueline 25 from C and G Howes. The July class went to Liz Shankland again with Tudful Jacqueline 26 and both January gilt and boar went to Billquay Farms with Billquay Ruby 518a and Billquay Yorkshireman 512a respectively. The overall champion went to Liz Shankland with her senior sow and reserve went to Billquay with their senior sow. In the final of the Young Handlers competition Ryon Perry of Billquay won overall reserve champion for his great handling technique—well done Ryan. In the judges’ seats were Phil Fowlie for the breed classes and Sharon Barnfield for the Interbreed and Young Handlers’ final. Pa ge 11 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

Secrets to Successful Breeding by Nick Hargrave

ou wait patiently for the big day when the date penciled on the kitchen calendar says you sow will Y farrow. She looks HUGE, an enormous matronly porcine battleship. A tummy as big as the Isle of Wight, and an udder suggesting enough milk to keep an ice-cream factory supplied for a month. And she farrows down with…TWINS!!! What went wrong ? The nice man you bought her from said that her mother and grandmother and every other female relation for the 16 past generations had never given birth to less than a dozen piglets… and here you are with TWO babies. Talk about feeling cheated. And you have twenty people who ordered half a pig for the freezer in five months’ time. How can this happen? It’s no wonder the damned things are rare. At this rate, they will be totally extinct by the Christmas after next. The economics of your breeding sow enterprise begin not at farrowing, but a shade less than 4 months before that time. Management of the sow from weaning to a few weeks post service needs to be well planned and delivered in order to guarantee large numbers of healthy viable piglets at the other end of the gestation period. A healthy sow at weaning will have the capacity to produce follicles in her ovary that as they mature lead to her exhibiting signs of being on heat. Correct attention to detail at service will ensure that a rea- sonable number of these follicles will produce eggs that are successfully fertilized and implanted as embryos in the uterus. In reality, you would normally require 8 or 9 piglets weaned from a gilt litter and 10 to 12 from a sow in order to provide an economic return for the costs involved in feeding and maintenance. Naturally, if you are able to command a significant premium for your progeny, then you could manage with fewer numbers sold to cover costs, but conversely, more pigs sold per sow still adds up to a financially viable enterprise, regardless of how much you charge when selling your piglet or porker. At Wildgrove, we have a basic template to wean sows on a Monday morning. This enables me to know that ser- vice will take place over the period from late afternoon on Friday, until Sunday morning, and co-incidentally, that farrowing will usually be on Tuesdays. A mixture of natural service (only Saddleback) and Large White AI is maintained, with a range from totally natural service, to totally AI, with most sows receiving a mixture of the two. Over the past five years, the rolling average for live piglet births has been in excess of 12 for all parities (sows and gilts), including 3 litters of 20 total (live and still-born) births. By comparison to commercial herds using Meishan genetics, this may seem a very moderate performance, nevertheless, it is a production level that proves Saddlebacks to be as viable a breed as any other. The first factor to bear in mind when serving your sow is at what stage she has been weaned. The uterus requires time to adjust from the stage it was in at farrowing, and so if you are weaning early, say at three weeks old, you may not achieve as good litter numbers as if you were to wean later. My preference would be to wean at between five and a half, and six and a half weeks post farrowing. Then you will have just four and a half to five days before the sow should come on heat. This is not time enough to improve the sow’s body condition, but it is a period to encourage the sows to come on heat. Here at Wildgrove, we do not run the weaned sows in a group; instead, they are put in a large straw-bedded pen, with the stock boar in an adjoining pen. It is out of sight and sound of any weaned piglets, and not close to any other pigs on the farm, so the hope is that close contact with the boar will stimulate the sow to oestrus. The sow will have been on a ‘to-appetite’ diet pre-weaning, in order for her to provide as much milk as possible for her piglets, and so hopefully she will not have lost excessive body condition. For welfare reasons, a very thin sow, or a weaned first-litter gilt, would only be served by AI unless there happened to be a young boar available. As long as the sow has a good appetite, the pre- weaning diet is still maintained from weaning to service in order to provide the best chance of conception. Signs of oestrus in the sow are generally easy to recognise - Pa ge 12 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1 basically, any significant change in her usual demeanor and behav- KEY tips for service using a boar iour, growling and lifting the ears, a tendency to remain standing • Be aware that a large or overweight boar will only be able stock-still, particularly when pressure is applied to her back, inter- to be used on mature sows. est in the boar, and when fully on heat, even a reluctance to eat. With natural service, I usually wait until after the sow and boar • Regular use will provide healthier and more fertile semen have been fed, then my preference is to turn the sow in to the (this can be a very real problem for the small-scale pig boar’s pen ( vice-versa would often result in the boar wasting time keeper where the boar has only a very few sows to serve by sniffing around an un-familiar pen), allow one observed ser- each year). vice, and returning the sow back to her adjacent pen. Boars are all • In order to give the boar confidence, try to make sure different, and a good-working one is to be prized. It is, of course, that the first time you use your boar, that it is on a small preferable that the boar will not rough-up the sow too much. and experienced sow. Ideally, one would require him to serve the sow with the mini- mum of fuss, and without any predilections for exotic behaviour. • Do not leave the sow and boar together if it is obvious A young boar given a few pointers during the first few services that you are too early or too late in oestrus and the sow is should get the message quickly, and it is particularly important not standing. not to leave him to his own devices. Not allowing him to jump on the wrong end will help, and, its probably a great help for your social life off the farm if you have a rubber glove handy in your pocket in case assistance is needed in “handing-in” the boar. In most cases, the sow will exhibit oestrus for between one and three days. Service ONLY during oestrus will result in pregnancy, it’s no use serving your sow just because it’s your holiday, or you are taking a day off work. As a basic model, I would normally serve the sow on Friday evening after her meal, and continue one service every 12 hours from then onwards until the standing reflex ended. In practice, this would normally result in 3 or 4 services. If using both AI and natural service, I would alternate between the two. Using just AI for a sow, I should usually order three doses of semen to ensure effective conception. This would be probably more than a commercial unit might budget for, but I err on the side of caution – the postage costs more than the actual semen, and it is a poten- tial disaster for me to have a sow not hold in pig and need service at a time when I may not be at home to do such. Following service, the sow is kept as quiet as possible for at least three weeks. No changes to management are done, and no routine treatments are given. If possible, the sow is kept in the same pen, and her feed is gradually brought down to the dry sow level. Three weeks post service, the sows are checked for returns, and just to make absolutely sure, at four and a half weeks, they are pregnancy tested. Gilts are a little more problematic to me as I can’t manage the day when they are going to be on heat in the same way as I can with the sows. I try to spot when they are cycling, and put them next to the boar a few days before a heat. In general, I find that gilts can exhibit the signs of oestrus over a longer period than my sows do, and I have to be patient and wait until they are definitely standing before serving for the first time.

KEY tips for service when using AI Useful information can often be found on www.thepigsite.com

• Prepare well in advance and check with your AI Station that availability and delivery dates This article was first published in Saddleback Times. can coincide with when your sow will be on heat. • Be aware that the semen needs to be kept at 17degrees C. Put a thermometer alongside the semen. During winter, it might need to be quite close to the Aga, and in the middle of summer, it will probably need to be in the pantry. • Remember to agitate the doses every so often. This in practice means to keep them somewhere convenient, and to give a gentle swirl two or three times a day to prevent the semen from settling out • Don’t be in a hurry. AI-ing cannot be done successfully while you are waiting for the tea to cook. Give yourself plenty of time, and be very patient. The more time you take over service, the better you success rate will be. Photo by Richard Nettleton Pa ge 13 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1

Memoirs of a Pig-Keeping Man by Richard Lutwyche

ig keepers did not always come in the shape of men like Sid Williams (Merrywood herd of Wessex Saddlebacks)and his contemporaries with their large pedigree herds P competing at the major agricultural shows. Traditionally, pigs were kept as part of a small scale farming operation throughout Britain. This is why pedigree recording was not considered until just over a century ago whilst cattle, horses and were highly re- garded and their family trees closely watched almost since agricultural improvers began. The pig was, instead, that most useful of animals which would consume all the slops and waste and provide a working family with all their meat for the winter. Thus, the situation typically found today amongst the keepers of rare breeds where just one or two pigs are kept for their owner’s pleasure and deep freeze is more typical of history than the large- scale commercial herds that some of us hope our chosen breeds might aspire to. With such swine husbandry in mind, I travelled west of the River Severn to the Vale of Gloucester to talk to an old friend, Eric Freeman, who many of you will know for his , or his heavy horses and his work with the Horse Loggers Association or the Gloucestershire Support Group of the RBST or one of a number of societies concerned with preserving the best from the past. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting Eric, I can only sympathise and by Eric Freeman, not in his working way of description, say that he is truly, one of only a very few of nature’s real gentlemen. attire but dressed as a Council Mem- ber of the Three Counties Show. Money-spinners Photo by Eileen Hayes. He opened our discussion by apologising that his knowledge of pigs was limited as his father had hated them – “their faces take too much washing ”, Freeman senior would say, meaning that their feed was too much trouble and expense – and thus Eric did not have any until he was married. His father always had a pithy turn of phrase and Eric is recording many of his homespun proverbs and sayings for posterity such as ‘ Better never rise at all than rise too high and have to fall’ . Eric’s first pig came from his newly acquired father-in-law and was a large sow of a white colour. As time drew towards farrowing, so she grew until the day ar- rived… and she had one solitary piglet. His father, George, looked over the sty door and thoughtfully announced, “Ar, money-spinners! Aye.” Yet Eric’s grandfather had kept pigs on his small farm in Newent, although farming was not his main livelihood as he was the local undertaker and draper and did a little dealing in to boot. Thus is was that he had some buildings adjoining the old Newent cattle market with a special rail in the perimeter fence which could be slid aside so that he could drive his pigs or sheep straight into their market pens. That fence still stands although the market is long gone and cast iron fence posts stand sentry to the memories of countless sales with stock brought in from the small farms in the many surrounding villages. His grandfather had started farming and in 1911 employed ‘Old Cecil’ to look after the pigs, which were all housed in buildings. Originally, they were supplied to local pork butchers but by the 1930s they were being sent up to G.H. Monk & Co Ltd in Birming- ham whose local agent was Charlie Clissold “from Stroud way” who was, by all accounts, quite a character, always attired in a battered old green trilby hat. In fact, Eric’s grandfather was killed when he was hit by a car whilst leaving his lorry to open a gate to load stock for Monks around Christmas 1934. A Shovelful of Slack Coal Eric remembers the strange policy of not feeding the pigs on Sundays, or a least not with their usual swill diet. On the Sabbath, they got instead a bran mash followed by a shovelful of slack coal – a purification diet to help rid them of any excesses in the swill during the week. The swill was collected in a large square slate tank, which would be full to the brim. It was not considered ready until is started ‘ to foment ’ and bubble when it would be mixed with barley meal and then with ‘sharps’, a form of flour, and fed to the appre- ciative pigs. In 1972, when Eric acquired his first Gloucestershire Old Spots, another retainer of the family, ‘Old Joe’, ‘Old Cecil’s ‘ son and heir, muttered darkly that they “ ouldn’t be druv ” and explained that, in the early 1930s, Eric’s grandfather had bought some at a local farm sale and had left Joe to herd them back along the road to Newent, a walk of just a few miles. To those who know their Spots, these were typical of the breed, being well laid back and fancying a lie down on the road rather than a tiresome walk. Thus he had wended his way behind them with a bucket of pebbles, tossing a stone ahead for them to pursue. That drive took up most of the day. No Need to Hurry Stock Eric was to discover some of the truth in this with his first batch bought from Chris Whittal who had lots of pigs and decided to sell off his Spots. Eric arrived to collect them and found them sunning themselves in a large wallow. Eventually, they were loaded onto the trailer but back at home, with the trailer reversed up to the straw-filled house prepared for them, they would not budge. He tried lifting their rumps and wheelbarrowing them off and pushing and shoving but to no avail and in desperation, gave up and Cont…/14 Pa ge 14 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1 Memoirs of a Pig-Keeping Man cont. went in for his dinner. On his return, they were in a heap in the straw in the shed, having moved at their own pace – another example, Eric says, of why there is usually no need to hurry stock. Talking of old boars reminds Eric of the sights at the old Gloucester market where there would be special high pens to house huge boars, each frothing prolifically with the white sputum all over the floor of their pens as they vied with each other for dominance. Cuthbert Dobbs, at nearby Upleadon, used Spots crossed with a white boar to produce his own strain of white hybrid which had much improved mothering and handling qualities as a result of the GOS blood. Every few generations, he would buy in another Spots sow to boost the genes. Cuthbert’s brother Gilbert was a well known character to local pig breeders since, as well as his job as postman, he would drive a wagon round to local farms with about six boars on board in different compartments. Once you chose your boar, he would tiptoe down a narrow plank to perform his duty before returning to his box. Eric’s main recollec- tion of this early threat to AI was the fact that both the wagon and the individual boars made their presence known from some distance by the rank smell that accompanied them. Eric Freeman’s interests do not stop at livestock but include almost every aspect of rural life and this part of Gloucestershire, bordering the Forest of Dean, is truly rural. Most of the A photograph from 1898 of auctioneer, Joe older cottages would have had a pig cote, (sty), and in many instances these were built on to Clarke, in his trademark boater, selling pigs the house itself, making the feeding of scraps easy. Eric recalls one where the front of the in Newent Market. cottage faced the road with just a narrow strip of grass separating the two. Onto the front was built an equally narrow pig cote and from driving past, one could observe the on-going development of the pig inside. As late as the 1970s, Eric was asked by a local dealer, ‘Bomber’ (pronounced ‘Bummer’) Dee, to collect a pig from a cottage in a nearby village, belonging to ‘Busy’ Benson (surname changed). (Said Mr Benson was not known to work hard but had a large family despite being slight in build and being married to a large and formidable wife.) Two of the sons of ‘Busy’ worked at the flour mills at Gloucester Docks and had access to the sweepings off the lorries and other perks and decided to make good use of these by fattening a pig at home. The cote was built from match board with a small hole cut for the weaner to enter, and there he stayed, growing and developing much as pigs do. Very few cottagers in the old days bothered to muck out until the pig was gone and the sons of ‘Busy’ Benson maintained the old traditions. Eric reversed his Land Rover up to the cote and dropped the tailboard over the ditch to act as a ramp. The only way to get piggy out was to dismantle his prison from around him, since he filled all available space by this time. As the roof was lifted off, the pig blinked at his first sight of daylight since he entered as a scrawny weaner and he was soon loaded up and away with his home de- constructed until next time. Time for the Pig Killer to Visit Today, most people in both towns and villages are removed from the everyday realities of stockmanship and, in particular, death, which probably accounts for much of the atti- tude of the urban-based animal protest movements. But Eric recalls the days in the 1930s and 40s when, as winter drew on towards Christmas; the time came for the pig killer to visit. This was a regular occurrence in these times when transport and money were scarce and a family could no more afford to take a pig to a slaughter house than to fly. Thus, usually on a Sunday, the village pig killer would come to perform his grisly task. In this instance, the pig killer was a local butcher, Stan Philips, but Eric recalls another local man, a building and odd job man, known as ‘Doctor’ Lake, presumably from his surgical skills in jointing the carcase. In other villages, the part-time pig dispatcher might have been a shepherd or the village policeman. The occasion would be chaotic with local children in noisy attendance and the deafening squeals of the pig as a slip cord was placed around its upper jaw to control it and a humane killer used to quickly dispatch it. This instrument consisted of a bell-shaped plunger placed against the forehead, which was stuck with a mallet forcing a spike into the brain. The carcase was quickly bled by cutting the throat and pumping a hind leg to expel all the blood, which was caught in a bucket and stirred for the making of black pudding. The carcase was spread-eagled onto a pig ladder, basically a broad version of a short builder’s ladder, which was stood upright Charlie Winter, an old time village pig killer while the meat ‘set’. This took place after the bristles had been removed which was an from the Cotswolds. Pa ge 15 Tamworth Trumpet Volume 5, Issue 1 art in itself. The pig was laid on its belly on the ground with its legs fore and aft and a wigwam of bolting straw set around it. Bolting straw, the result of reaping and threshing, was always considered superior for this purpose to baled straw, as it burned evenly producing no hot spots. The operation was completed by scalding with boiled and slightly cooled water and scraping to remove any remaining bristles. This was hard work as cottagers’ pigs were much heavier and more mature when they were killed in this period (sometimes 30 score or 600lbs), and the bristles would be well set. Eric’s father always maintained that the best bacon pig was a first farrowing sow whose litter had pulled her down and which was then fed up again, producing ‘new meat’ which was firm and dry and took the salt well. Singeing the bristles with bolting straw ca. 1905. The carcase would rest for 24 hours and the pig killer would return on the Monday night to butcher and joint the beast. All this took place in surroundings, which would simply horrify today’s health inspec- tors. Eric recalls just such an occasion when the carcase was being cut up on a bench in a small cowshed. A piece of meat slipped from the table into the drainage gutter below and was retrieved by Stan Philips and wiped on his smock, “ Ah never mind about that. It takes a germ to catch a germ!” And, as the old saying goes, nothing but the squeal was wasted. The ‘pigmeat’, not pork, was that lying along the spine which is cut out of bacon pigs. This was a special treat, tasting, Eric says, like first class . But there was too much for immediate consump- tion with no refrigeration so it was shared amongst neighbours and friends in the certain knowledge that when they killed their pig, you would be a recipient of some of their excess. The offal was also treated urgently with the intestines being washed and turned for sausage skins and chitterlings. The liver would be made into delicious faggots, each wrapped in its own skin of caul fat or ‘veil’ as it was locally called from its appearance. Eric recalls the smell of faggots cooking after his mother had taught his wife how to prepare them and how, when he walked into the kitchen to be met by the aroma of liver with sage and onion, he insisted in sampling them straight from the oven. The Main Purpose Was to Produce Salt Bacon The head would be split and cooked in the ‘furnace’, the local term for the copper used for washing the clothes. Once fully cooked, the head meat would be scraped from the bone, placed in a cake tin and firmly weighted to produce delicious brawn. Sometimes, the cheeks would first be removed and cured to produce Bath Chaps, traditionally made from local Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs. But the main purpose of the pig was to produce salt bacon and with this traditionally cured meat in the pan, (forget what you buy today), with a couple of eggs cooking in its fat, was, as a friend of Eric’s, Sid Hayward, put it, “Talk about bloody caviar – they wouldn’t know how to live, would ‘em?” This was on the occasion of sampling just such a flitch, which had been hanging from his kitchen beam for about a year and this only a matter of some two years ago. The process used was by dry curing the flesh over a period of weeks by placing the sides on top of each other on a slate or stone pig bench and turning and salting them every other day. The salt must be dry, ideally lump salt which would come wrapped in brown paper, broken up with a hammer, but as this isn’t available today, use a coarse salt as used by abattoirs to preserve hides and to ensure its dryness, warm it in the oven first. Damp salt will not flow over the meat and thus you use too much and spoil the bacon. For the joints and hard to-get-at bits, saltpetre was used to kill the germs. Once cured, the bacon might be hung up to store or placed in a tub of oatmeal or sawdust. Whilst this latter method kept away the flies, it could result in weevils, but as one old boy is recorded to have said, “Ah dun mind t’weevils but t’was the squeaking ‘em made when they got ‘atween me teeth”. If bacon was well hung, a slab would be cut the night before and soaked before it was cooked for breakfast. Sometimes, pieces of fat would go yellow or rancid, or as Eric says, ‘rastie’ and would burn the back of your throat as you ate it. The chances are we shall never experience these things again and as Eric says, things have degenerated. Oh, certainly things in many ways are much better but in improving things, we lose so much and must now rely on the memories of countrymen like Eric Free- man to recall them as we sit in our centrally heated houses, with our entertainment centres and fast cars and prepacked food from the supermarket. As I stated at the beginning, the establishment of the RBST has created a large number of people who have reverted to keeping pigs in the way of old time cottagers, but with the added bonus of pedigree registration and improvements in husbandry. This did not happen in the post-war period until the Trust was established and it is good that people should come back to having that close under- standing of animals by living with them once more.

This article was first published in The Ark in 1996. Eric Freeman has privately published a book ‘Thumbsticks & Frails’ recording many of his reflec- tions on country life available direct from him by phoning 01452 790272 @ £7.50 + P&P. The Tamworth Breeders’ Club Newsletter The Tamworth Breeders’ Club

Tamworth Trumpet edited by Richard Lutwyche Carolyn MacInnes, Secretary © Tamworth Breeders’ Club & Richard Lutwyche The Tamworth Pig Breeders’ Club The next edition will be published Autumn/Winter 2010 Walnut Cottage Common Road NEW ADDRESS Please send contributions to: Wrangle Richard Lutwyche, Tamworth Trumpet, Freepost (GL442), Cirencester, Glos., Boston GL7 5BR Lincolnshire, PE22 9BY Tel: 01285 860229 Phone: 01205 871792 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] www.tamworthbreedersclub.co.uk Don’t forget, you can advertise pigs for sale or wanted on the Club website, FREE! Furthermore, you will find there the full range of Club merchan- Tamworths - dise and you can download an order form to send to the Secre- The future’s orange! tary with your payment.

Letter from Carolyn I have now been the Tamworth Club secretary for nearly 5 years and this will be my 5th AGM. I am very keen to continue this for the foreseeable future and I have been thinking of ideas for the next few years. I am conscious that we need to stay fresh and move on. Recently I spent 3.5 hours cutting and pasting addresses of Tamworth breeders and have been able to pinpoint 130 BPA breeders with Tamworths who are not TBC members. I will target them soon. Pleasingly there are only 15 members who are ex TBC members. This means that the members we have lost over the years have gone out of pigs rather than gone off us! I think we need to decide as a club what we want to achieve. We don’t want to sit back on our laurels, but then we aren’t going to change the world either. The truth is somewhere between the two! Clearly Showing is hugely important as it’s our shop window onto the world. But equally it sometimes scares new members off if they think we are too pro-showing. There is a huge move towards “real” food these days. Maybe this aspect is something we could magnify. Our future direction has got to be decided together as a committee with membership support. I think we are very lucky to have Caroline Wheatley-Hubbard as President as she brings all her expertise of farming and meat marketing/retailing to the table. We must push our presence on the internet and I’ve created a very quick Facebook group which I invite you all to join. At the mo- ment it’s in its infancy but it can be open to the whole wide world, or we can limit it to invited people (members?) only. Maybe the club could publish a monthly update? Your views and offers of assistance please. Perhaps some of the younger members would like to get involved in this. Also what about a monthly e-mailed newsletter? Something very small, but an electronic “touch base” so that people feel included. Once again I would need some outside help – any offers? There are a surprising number of BPA members in Ireland/Northern Ireland. Maybe Gavin Goodman would appreciate some Club support? We could even club together and send him a grunter of a differing bloodline? Maybe he could be encouraged to set up an affiliated Club. I think they feel quite cut off/left out across the water. I will be in touch with him and others soon, (hopefully be- fore the AGM), to see if there is any interest over there. What about building ties with associations in other countries? I’ve tried this and failed in the past. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong area? I like Nick’s idea of publishing past newsletters on the website. This might encourage people to actually join us. I hope this will be ratified at the next AGM. I am keen to give the club a five year kick start and facelift. Maybe we need to ask ourselves if it is time for some fresh faces on the committee. If any of you feel you would like to get involved in any way at all, please do contact me for a chat. My contact details as always are on the back page of the Trumpet. I would like to see a happy, go ahead, vibrant club which is going to go places over the next few years and become a real force in the pedigree Our AGM will take place at the famous Cotswold Farm Park pig world. near Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire by kind invi- tation of Adam Henson and will include lunch and a tour. Carolyn Note the date—Sunday 17th October. Lunch cost will be £16.25/head. Contact Carolyn to reserve places ASAP!