As I promised last week, I am going to try and give you a starting guide to integrate pigs into your permaculture operation! I’m going to start with the basics and gradually delve into the more scientific side of the whole process.

There are two main groups of pig breeds, pigs with long snouts (such as the Tamworth, Mangalitsa or the Duroc) and pigs with shorter snouts (such as the Berkshire and Middle White). You may be thinking why this would make a difference to the pigs behaviour? If not, pipe down.

A pigs snout determines it’s foraging behaviour, with a longer snout allowing the pig to dig around in the litter dotted around your pens or enclosures, and a shorter snout allowing the pig to get closer to the ground, allowing more of a grazing-orientated behaviour. This will in turn affect which type of food a permaculture system could benefit with the most. I once heard a fact, when watching a documentary (not the most scientific and proven source, I know). Now bear with me on this, that pigs skull morphology can alter once within it’s lifetime to adapt to new surroundings. I’m still to find a reliable source for this yet.

You may now be thinking that the pig snout morphology (shape) will limit the breeds you are able to keep within your system, however this may not be the case when you take into account their intelligence (what it appears to be – we will call this ‘perceived intelligence’, or actual intelligence). There is the obvious fact, and it has been argued for many years now, that pigs are quite intelligent animals and as you’d expect (what uncle ben from Spiderman, should have said), with great intelligence comes great adaptability.

The morphology of the pigs skull will, as mentioned previously, determine which kind of plants and vegetation will survive the inquisitiveness of pigs. To really get the most out of your permaculture system, there needs to be a harmony/synchrony between many, if not all, aspects of the system. This could involve growing ‘nitrogen-rich’ plants and fungi (clovers, peas and wild mushrooms) and ensuring other types of nutrient dominant plants (for instance plants and vegetables rich in carbohydrates) such as potatoes, carrots and swedes. When a combination of plants are used, it allows for maximum nutrient uptake – less wastage/pollution of your permaculture system. This is another topic, which could be regarded as complex, for another day, nitrogen-energy synchrony.

On that brief and very introductory note of how pigs can be used in permaculture systems, I will have to leave the next topic, for another day – Different types of feed for the pig in a permaculture system.