Pertwood Farm
Wiltshire
Tim White describes Pertwood farm :
Lower Pertwood Farm is an 1850 acre mixed organic farm on the edge of the Salisbury Plain. We are organic pioneers starting conversion in 1986 long before it became fashionable. We grow oats, rye, wheat, triticale & barley as well as producing beef, sheep & pigs.(Graig Farm also sells Pertwood's breakfast cereals)
Our pig breeding system is based on a cross bred ‘Pertwood Blue’ sow This is a Saddleback (milky & hardy) X Large White (prolific & lean) sow that can produce a good size litter outside in all weathers She will milk until weaning, when her young are 8 weeks old, without losing condition .We put a Duroc boar onto our ‘Blue’ sows to produce a reasonably fast growing, succulent & lean quality carcase. We run a small nucleus herd of pedigree Saddleback & Duroc pigs so as to keep the buying in of breeding stock to a minimum.
Our pigs live outside all year round on our well draining chalk downland, where they create fertility as are part of an arable rotation. They return to the same field only after at least 4 years to stop parasites building up in the soil.
All stock have access to shelter/food/water/bedding/grazing at all times, they are checked twice daily by professional stockmen and individual treatments for any ailments are given as necessary (not very often). We sell some of our bulk cereals to a local mill that returns it to us as a complete compound pig food. We are inspected by the Soil Association & Assured British Pigs. Our salmonella ZAP score is in Group 1 & our vet makes at least quarterly herd health inspections.
Our aim in all parts of the farm is to produce the highest quality food without compromising any of our organic & environmental principles. We already have our cereals, muesli, flour & puddings selling under our own brand in many retail outlets & are keen to follow this with our meats too. We have won ‘Taste of the West’ prizes for our Pork products & were ‘Soil Association Producer of the Year’ in 2000.We believe our pork is distinctive, coming from a rare breed base with a commercial leaning.
We are keen to improve our pig production through genetic selection & to this end are establishing a BLUP evaluation programme to monitor performance. At the present we run 41 sows producing 8 to 10 fat pigs a week."
