Our feeders average 230 to 245lbs hanging weight at around 9-10 months of age. Our breeding sow is about 325 lbs and our breeder boar is about 450 lbs. These are on the larger side of the breed standard, but we felt that this confirmation better fit our needs.

Some growers have achieved a faster growth rate by free-feeding their pigs. The compromise with this is that while you may reach butcher weight faster you will compromise on meat quality and flavor. It is this quality that sets this breed apart, so we feel that if speed not flavor is your focus there are better breeds out there to achieve this.

Their meat is beautifully marbled and full full of flavor. Our pigs are only fed 4lbs of non-gmo soy/corn freed daily, left over grass-fed whey and then left to graze on high quality forage for the remainder of their diet. This results in a slightly slower grow out than commercial breeds and heritage breeds but the little extra time we take makes all the difference in the quality of the pork.

IPP Pigs love to graze and need to by supplied with quality forage to get the best quality meat that the breed is known for. Some breeders will supplement hay or alfalfa when forage is not available. We live in the southern gulf coast and are lucky to have forage available year round.

The pork chops are large and similar in size to a conventional chop that most people are used to. The IPP yields excellent quality and ample bacon. Large hams, shoulders, and beautiful jowl bacon.

When we decided to start raising our own pork we had very clear requirements when looking for the right breed.

First they needed an easy going temperament that made working with them safe and pleasurable. While we found some heritage breeds that on an individual basis easy going it did not seem to be a breed standard especially across breeding pigs.

While we knew we wanted a pig with a practical finished carcass size, we knew we needed a medium size that would be practical for a small framed women and kids to move, load, and work with on a daily basis.

Last and one of our most important considerations was finding a pi that did not destroy our land. Keeping our pastures beautiful and healthy is very important to us. We did not want to sacrifice our land to our pigs. We have worked very hard to preserve our soil health with rotational grazing and good pasture management practices so we needed a pig breed that would utilize the forage without destroying it. IPP’s have a medium length snout that turns upward. This up-turned snout allows the IPP’s to graze and makes it difficult for them to root.

The Kune Kune breed met a lot of our needs like great temperament , ability to graze, and beautiful meat but they had too issues that made them impractical for our needs. First it can take up to two years to grow out to harvest weight. We needed to be able to harvest several pigs a year for our family alone and the slow growing Kune’s just were not practical for this.

Secondly, the carcass size and specifically the pork chops were much too small to be practical for our family. The ratio of lard to lean meat also did not fit our needs. We value very much value fat and lard an love well marbled flavorful meat. Our IPP’s supply us with ample needs while still giving us big, beautiful lean meat cuts.

Their are a lot of reasons that we chose the IPP breed and in order to make sure we get the best of the breed we have invested in getting the best stock we can with genetics that typifies the IPP.

We carefully evaluate all of our piglets and make sure that if they are selected as registered breeders they will continue to promote the characteristics and values that the IPP breed was created for. For this reason some of our pigs will be sold to be feeders only this is not because they are not excellent pigs but because their was something about them that as a breeder we don’t want to promote such as uneven teats or not being light on their feet, these are issues that will have no impact on a pig that will be raised to be butcher in 10 months but can have serious impacts on a breeding pig raised for the long term.

There are a lot of unregistered pigs on the market that are being marketed as IPP but will not live up to the name, so be careful of who you purchase from and ask a lot of questions from who ever you purchase from.

If you are looking for breeders look at the sow and boar and make sure their body size and confirmation fit what you want in an IPP. Also make sure any breeding pairs that you are interested are from separate breeding lines and have a low coefficient of inbreeding which the breeder should be able to provide you with.

We are a small breeder because we have chosen produce quality over quantity. We purposely choose to leave our stocking rates low in order best suit our farm. Our breeding lines are Sam/Pepper. If you desire a breeding pair we will assist in forming a pair through our good relationships with other local breeders.

We highly recommend that you visit the Idaho Pasture Pig Registry website. They have great resources and will help you build your knowledge and understanding of Idaho Pasture Pigs.

You can also find information about other breeders incase we can not provide what you need.

https://idahopasturepigregistry.com/

We also recommend the Idaho Pasture Pig group on Facebook.