Know your pork?

Hogs are part of the order Artidactyla and the family Suidae. The five genera and nine species live on every continent except Antarctica. Wild hogs roam forests, meadows, and swamps. They are surefooted and fast runners, excellent swimmers and love a mud bath. When cornered they will fight courageously and will use their tusks as weapons. They will chase you to defend their young when you bother their piglets. They are mainly active at night and have an omnivorous diet of fungi, roots, bulbs, tubers, fruit, snails, earthworms, reptiles, young birds, eggs, small rodents and carrion. In hog country you can bait them with sweet and sour corn which they love!

The first domestication of the pig is thought to have taken place in China around 4900 BC and may have occurred as early as 10,000 BC in Thailand. Many hog breeds were developed especially in Europe and they became very important farm animals. The first pigs in the United States were brought by Polynesians to Hawaii around 1000 AD. and by the Spanish in the Southeast in the early sixteenth century. Average lifespan in the wild is 15-20 years but may be up to 27 years. Litter size varies from 2-12 piglets.

Domestic pigs have much larger litters with one of 37 recorded. Hair varies from coarse bristles and practically hairless to the curly woolly coats of Ecuador herd hogs. Colors vary too, from the white or black solid and many colors inbetween to the rust colored with white and black highlights of the Red River Hog. Groups of pigs are called herds or sounders. The basic sounder is made up of females and their babies from this year and from the previous year.

Now you know alittle about your pork?