Oaklands Pigs - Sharing our Expertise
Clare & Robin welcome you to the Oaklands Pigs website
Oaklands Farm is a working farm on the Kent/East Sussex Border, near Tunbridge Wells.
We started keeping pigs over 25 years ago, mostly raising weaners for the freezer before starting breeding from our own stock.
We are not currently running any pig keeping courses.
In early 2005 we replaced our many assorted pigs with new pedigree saddleback breeding stock, the foundation of our saddleback herd today.
Apart from these, we have examples of some of the other traditional pigs, including Tamworths, Old Spots and Kune Kune. We have also kept Middle Whites, Welsh, Oxford Sandys, Berkshires, Large Whites, Landrace, Large Blacks and Mangalitzas in the past. With rising costs we have recently reduced the number of animals at the farm and now only keep one or two of each breed (Saddleback, Tamworth, Old Spot) as adult breeding stock.
So between us we have many years of experience of buying, keeping and breeding pigs, and offer friendly advice to those new to pig keeping, or those thinking of moving on to breeding pigs.
Here at the farm we have set up a number of different environments in paddocks, woods, and barns with an assortment of styles of fencing and numerous varieties of arks, so there is always something going on at the farm.
Being a small farm, we can take the time to discuss and help you choose your pigs, and give help and advice on setting up and all aspects of pig keeping.
For disease control purposes, we do not hire any boars from this farm, or accept sows for mating.
We are not able to offer any vet student or work experience placements, as there is very little maintenance required for our outdoor herd.
Latest News
Gladys wins Best Old Spot at Surrey
Gladys the Gloucester Old Spot won a big rosette as best old spot at the Surrey County show on Bank Holiday Monday. Although she is a four year old sow weighing around 300 kilos (that’s 48 stone) she can still move around the ring. She wasn’t so pleased however at winning “The Grumpiest Pig” award in the novelty classes.
As at the Heathfield show, the Welsh pig took top honours, but we again came second and third to that winning pig in our breed classes. But this time the roles were reversed with Lola the Landrace taking the second slot and Harriet the Saddleback coming third.
Lola and Clare also won the pig most like it’s owner, I think it was the ears !
It was however a rather wet day, but that did mean lots of people visited the livestock marques especially during the downpours.
Harriet wins Best of Breed at Heathfield
Harriet wins Best Saddleback at Heathfield 2014.
The show season got off to a good start with all of our pigs winning prizes at the show. Harriet came second in her breed class to a beautiful Welsh pig, which then went on to win Best in Show. Lola the Landrace was not far behind by winning the 3rd place in that class just behind Harriet.
The judge Steve Loveless is checking Harriet’s teats to see how many piglets she could feed.