Piglets and Party

Last week we welcomed to the world 15 Gloucester Old Spot piglets - mum and babies are doing well!  

All of our Gloucester Old Spot pigs here at Fordhall Farm are free range. After they have been weaned off their mum, they are fed on a mixture of GM free pig feed as well as spent brewer’s grain from the local Joules Brewery in Market Drayton.

Our piglets really do run about freely – as they are so tiny, they can still fit under the paddock fence and explore the farmyard…but they soon run back to mum when they get hungry…or if they meet a cow…or even a chicken for that matter!

The Gloucester Old Spot breed was first officially recorded in the UK in 1913, although, there are numerous paintings from centuries before depicting spotted pigs.  The breed originated in South West England and were also known as The Orchard Pigs as they were usually kept in cider and perry orchards.  According to folklore the spots on the pigs back were bruises caused by the falling fruit!

This lovely old English breed is tough and hardy, yet easy to handle. They enjoy rolling around in the mud and playing around the paddock!

Mud, mud glorious mud!

The staff at Fordhall also enjoy playing around in our own paddock…we somehow managed to pick the windiest, wildest evening of the week to hold our Staff BBQ!  The team at Fordhall has grown so much over the years and it was fantastic to be able to get everyone together for a chance to socialize outside of work.

We managed to hold out against the elements and everyone had a lovely evening! Thanks for doing the cooking Ben!