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
Photos for Chinese Year of the Pig
Next year 2019 is the Chinese Year of the Pig. So planning ahead, we were asked to assist with photography for some new merchandise for next year. The photos needed to be of pigs faces and the design company would then draw in cartoon bodies for them. Luckily we had a litter of tamworths and a litter of Landrace that were about a week old and ideal models for the shoot. Some of the piglets were more co-operative than others but we ended up with all the shots we needed. The design company have mostly been photographing dogs and cats, so this was a nice change for them too. Their merchandise can be seen at www.petsrock.co.uk (although the pigs won’t be on the site for a few month’s yet)
3 Best of Breeds
The weather was warm and sunny all through the three days of the South of England show. Oaklands pigs took 9 show pigs from 5 different breeds, as well as a sow with her 8 piglets for the pig village. That involved two trailer loads to get everyone there on the Wednesday setup day.
Greta the Old Spot won Best of Breed, repeating her win of the previous year.
Tara the Tamworth then won her Best of Breed, again a repeat of her 2017 win.
We also won best Landrace at last year’s show with our junior boar, but this year we again won Best of Breed but this time with our July Gilt Lorna.
So we once again had three pigs in the Interbreed Championship which was held on the Friday. Sadly no awards there, with the Supreme Champion being a Large White and the Reserve taken by a Berkshire.