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Advantages of the Saddleback
 The British Saddleback was one of Britain’s
mainstream breeds up to the 1970s. Renowned as a top quality
breeding animal, they were very popular for crossing with a white
breed to produce ‘blue pigs’ – white pigs with irregular blue/grey
markings – which were sold to swill feeders in commercial pork
operations. The advent of Swine Vesicular Disease in the early 1970s
led to severe restrictions on swill feeding and the collapse of that
market.
This coincided with the growing dominance of the
supermarkets which were looking for ultra-lean white pigs from the
intensive producers which mitigated against the coloured breeds and
numbers fell to the point when, in 1979, the breed was recognised by
the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) as a rare breed.
However, since then with the recognition that the RBST has helped
bring about and the inherent qualities of the Saddleback, it has
made a comeback. Each year, the BPA carries out a Bloodline Survey
to establish how many pedigree pigs exist and what the breakdown is
by bloodline. This is so that action can be taken if any bloodline
is threatened with extinction. Each bloodline is considered
important because each represents different genetic variation within
the breed.
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The sow is an excellent, milky dam. The British Saddleback is among
the most prolific breeds known and the average bred and reared per
litter is always among the highest of all breeds in Britain. They
are good mothers with an excellent temperament. Further, they are
long-lived and will still be producing good litters long after more
fashionable breeds and hybrids have been sent for sausages.
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There is a huge interest in the special qualities of the pork and
bacon from rare and traditional breeds and it is no gimmick.
Commercial pork is ultra-lean, often wet with the fat and lean
separating. Consequently, the eating quality is minimal. British
Saddleback meat is robustly excellent by contrast, succulent,
flavoursome and with crackling to die for. It carries some extra fat
but that is necessary to baste the meat while it cooks to give
flavour and succulence. Further, recent developments in scientific
study show that more naturally produced pork can carry
health-benefiting Omega-3 fatty acids in the fat so that it is not
necessarily the bad thing that some people have claimed. Finally,
the fact that the Saddleback is mostly black does not mean that you
will have black crackling or bacon rind. Like every other pig, the
skin on the Saddleback is the same after slaughter and the removal
of the bristles. It is bigotry in the mainstream meat industry that
believes otherwise. You may find some black stubble where the
bristles have not been fully removed but this should be seen as a
sign of quality.
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The British Saddleback suits all levels of the market. It is an
ideal ‘starter’ breed for the smallholder being of a good
temperament. Lop-eared pigs are generally considered more manageable
than prick-eared ones. As such, they are easy to manage. For larger
operations, they are excellent too. Helen Browning runs about 200
outdoor sows at her organic farm in Wiltshire which she crosses with
a Duroc to produce pork and bacon for her company, Eastbrook Farm
Organics. The breed’s docile nature, prolificacy and carcase
qualities make it ideal for this scale of operation too.
On dry-cured British Saddleback bacon from a taste test where the
top three out of 17 were all from named traditional breeds:
“Fantastic – how bacon should taste. Slightly greasy but this made
it a
mouth-watering rasher. Very little shrinkage and no water
leaked.
Full flavoured rather than salty and nicely chunky.”
BBC Good Food Magazine.
• Related:
Saddleback Photograph Gallery
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