Welsh Pig

Welsh Pig is a pig breed native to Wales, a white, lop-eared breed historically important to Welsh bacon and pork production through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is closely related in type to other British lop-eared white breeds, valued for a long body suited to bacon production and for good mothering ability on traditional smallholdings. Numbers declined sharply in the mid twentieth century as commercial pig farming consolidated around a smaller number of breeds, and the Welsh Pig became a rare breed conserved chiefly by breed societies and smallholders committed to maintaining traditional British livestock. It remains a recognized rare breed today, kept in relatively small numbers compared to its earlier importance to Welsh agriculture.