Ultimate Backyard Livestock: Meet the Kune Kune

Meet the Kune Kune. A small pig most ideally suited to a post shtf family.


They are:

1) Smaller than most pigs, very placid and friendly, eliminating the problems of handling large potentially dangerous pigs. Normally about 24" tall and 140 to 220 pounds.

2) Happy eating grass. These unusual pigs are perfectly content grazing on grass for their diet. Of course table scraps are welcome as well (but NO meat), but in general they are much easier and cheaper to feed than other pigs. This also makes them great lawnmowers, and they typically don't harm trees in the yard.

3) Sows usually have 6 to 8 piglets, but up to 12 are not unheard of. Gestation is 3 months and 3 weeks (roundabout).

4) They don't grow very fast, they are 12-15 months old when slaughtered. With most pigs you must castrate the males to avoid bad flavored meat (taint), but this is unnecessary with Kune's all the way up to 1.5 years old.

5) Like all pigs, the meat is easily cured to preserve it for later.. This is a HUGE advantage over other livestock if your talking about a situation where electricity (and therefore refrigeration) is iffy.
A 12-15 month old pig produces about 80-90 lbs of good quality meat and an additional 10-12 lbs of sausages.

The biggest drawback is that they are still a little hard to find but getting more popular. There are bunches in New Zealand, but the US is catching on slow.



Here are some links:

http://www.kunekune.co.nz/

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/swine/kunekune/index.htm

http://www.britishkunekunepigsociety.co.uk/

 

Interesting. Wonder if they are like traditional pigs with the making mud holes and all that jazz or was it bred out of them. I'll have to read some more.

 

added advantage of not having to worry about the moslem inlaws dropping by for dinner

 

cute pig .... if you bring several pairs over and start breeding them, you could make a killing on selling breeding stock!

Mini-pigs! everyone is into minis these days.. I can't keep mini nubian kids! they sell faster then I can breed them. Mini cows, horses, chickens.. oh those are bantam... LOL!

mini hogs! love it!

 

I don't know if I'd call a 200 pounder "mini" but smaller than usual nonetheless.


Tailor, from what I've read they don't tear up the ground too bad as long as you give'em some grazing space, and you can always add a "nose-ring" to stop the rooting.

 

hehe..... You could put up a sign that says "Property protected by Muslim Eating Hogs!"

 

dexter cattle

No link 4u but search it out, nice little critters. Won't do all the work 4u. ha ha snowbyrd

 

Muslim eating hogs. The pork that eats back. Haha.

 

We have potbellied pigs. They are cheap, alot of people will give them to you. They don't bother other livestock like large hogs do. Grazing them is not a problem. All in all they are easy keepers which would be a real plus post SHTF.

 

BRILLIANT!!!!! I wanted to raise pork on our homestead but didn't particularly fancy the thought of a big meam boar!!!

 

Here is a link to raising potbellied pigs for food.

http://www.windridgefarm.us/potbellypigs.htm

OGM

 

Great article on the potbellies! From keeping and using as a tractor to butchering and recipes.

I like the fact that the Kune's thrive eating just grass, but being hard to find in the US right now, potbellies would make a good choice.


You gotta check out the hate mail on that site........ people are nuts!

 

Considering that most of the pigs in the supermarket get to 800 pounds or so if not slaughtered, if these critters only get around 200 pounds I figure they qualify as mini. lol

 

Yes people are NUTS!!!!! I'm sure that none of the potbellied pigs in Asia are eaten

BTW I didn't mean to highjack your thread.

OGM

 

Thanks for the plug. I'm George from www.windridgefarm.us and my wife found this forum by backtracking the statistics from our website. I'm always glad to hear so many people like the site. We get emails from all over the world asking for advice on the hands off raising of livestock and once in a while some hatemail as you've all seen. But you have to admire the quality of life in America if people can complain about what other people eat.

As for "mini" our boars haven't gotten over 120 pounds full-grown despite being muscular and I think the biggest sow was 90 and that was with about a 1 inch layer of fat. That difference of 80 -100 pounds of muscle between the Kune and the potbelly is several orders of magnitude when you consider the amount of damage a pig can do to a person. I've never been injured by our pigs, and they are rather skittish, but I'd never take a nap in the pig pen just on general principle. A pig should be assumed to have less compunction about eating us as we have about eating them, and I like pork. The difference in size also changes how you butcher, whether you need one person or more, heavy equipment vs a few knives, etc.

OTOH the difference in size also translates into different cuts on your plate. The Kune will give you porkchops, but on a potbelly the loin only has about a 2 inch diameter so we make medallions and a whole single loin will make a little over one meal for our family of 5.

 

Hello George welcome to the site.

My family and I have eaten a few potbellies and none of us have died yet. [punch] I think those people need to put down the and step away. The only thing we don't like about them is we render our lard and the lard does not harden up unless it's kept refriderated. Other fats that we have rendered we just put in canning jars and store in the root cellar. I even mixed some goat fat with it this last time in hopes that it would harden up but it didn't help.

OGM

 

That is a truly interesting thought. I have to admit that I never tried storing the lard since it was so tastey when we had fresh lard to fry in we sort of tried frying just about everything. Because of that I can't really say if potbellies' lard will or wont set at room temperature. Fresh is several orders of magnitude difference from the store-bought and my guess is it won't matter which breed you use, fresh will be better. That said...most potbellies in the US are mutts, not real potbellies, but they are still the same species as every other comercial US hog.

However, we've gone to canning stew meat instead of freezing and there is a layer of lard on top at room temperature. We pull that off to saute onions before adding to the meat, so I'd guess that probably your potbelly lard wasn't exactly potbelly. during the livestock pyramid scheme for potbellies in the 70's and 80's there was a lot of inbreeding and crossbreeding. It took us 3 generations to breed back to true. That first generation of culling did have one that went to the dogs.

 

Bump. Just bought a female potbelly pig and found this thread by doing a search. the kune kune pigs look interesting too, but are a bit harder to come by and much more expensive, it seems. If I had the space to allow for grazing, the kunes would be a great choice, if I could find them locally, but with smaller areas, I think the potbellies will work out better for me. Gonna try something new, FWIW.

 

OSBThanks for the belly laugh!