Woodland Pigs

As we looked for the right fit for our pastures, we set our sights on the Berkshire breed—renowned for exceptional marbling, rich flavor, and outstanding grazing behavior. Unlike modern confinement breeds, Berkshires excel on pasture and in rugged forage environments. They grow robustly, transitioning into prime processing size at high weights while thriving on a diverse diet of natural forage supplemented with a targeted grain mix to ensure essential minerals like lysine.

Because we were already up to our elbows in other animals and projects, we started out with two barrows (castrated males) from the same litter. Nearly all farm animals hate to be alone, but we didn't want to overdo it and spread ourselves too thin. It only took about a day for them to warm up to us, and we were in love. We loved their little tails wagging when we came to pet them, their noises, their curious personalities—really just everything about them. So, we contacted our breeder and decided to add two more to the mix.

The only challenge early on was keeping their natural foraging instincts balanced with our land. Superman does not appreciate the idea of anything jeopardizing the quality of our main hay fields, so we knew we needed to manage their movement carefully. At first, we put their natural digging instincts to work in our garden to help turn the soil for the coming season. But as spring arrived, garden season was upon us, so they needed a permanent, productive home.

After looking into pasture and silvopasture setups, we knew our timberland was the answer. We have about 10 acres of woods that were mostly sitting idle outside of firewood and hunting, so we decided to shift them into a full woodland rotation.

We could not be more pleased, and we have never seen happier pigs! They absolutely love being in the shade of the canopy—especially during the heat of summer—and we love the understory clearing they do for us as they forage. It’s safe to say expanding our woodland pork production was one of the best moves we’ve made.

On a side note, if you’ve put off the idea of pigs because of misconceptions about smell or mess, pigs are actually remarkably clean and intelligent. Because we rotationally move them frequently to fresh ground whenever forage needs a break, there are no foul odors—just thriving soil and healthy animals.