Number One Pig

Buy A Pig

The Number One Pig Consortium has a simple aim: to provide its customers with great pork from rare breed pigs.

And we do this by rearing a whole pig on your behalf: your very own pig.

Even nowadays, rare breed pork is only really available from specialist butchers and most pork sold in this country is from commercial breeds, bred for their fast-growth and high lean to fat ratios.

So when you ask, where can I buy a pig, then look no further than here.

And when you buy a whole pig, you have the rare opportunity of being able to choose and cook pig joints that are just not on offer at the butchers. How often have you eaten roast rear leg? It's superb, yet few butchers would stock such a joint these days, and most are used for ham making. Yet the leg is one of the best roatsed pork joints - simply a treat.

Interestingly, when a customer recently pointed out that we were cheaper than his local supermarket, it came as some surprise to us. Now, we cannot officially confirm that fact without employing a research company, but when we did a price check amongst our local stores, we discovered that across the range of joints, we were the same, if not cheaper.

Buy Pig

So if you're thinking of buying a whole pig, or a half, and want to share the experience that hundreds of people have already enjoyed and know that your pork has been produced in the best possible circumstances, it's a very simple procedure. Email us via this link, or telephone 01944 759222 and we'll take you through the buy whole pig process.

Or have a look at Pick a Pig first.

Basically, you have a weaner (a young pig) and that will be yours until the day it's delivered to your home, ready for the table, or freezer, having been expertly butchered. The process from weaner to plate takes around four to five months, although pigs are available on a shorter timetable, or longer. Buying a pig will never be dull with us.

The amount of meat is around 40kg, so at a whole pig price of £299 per pig, the per kilo price works out at £7.48. The delivery charge is based on your postcode.

For those that haven't got the room for one pig, we also do halves at £175, matching them up with other customers wanting halves as well.

And don't forget to have a quick read of the Pig Blog.

Rare Breeds

As to the pigs themselves, we buy pigs (piglets) from top breeders. They are all rare breeds such as Saddlebacks, Gloucester Old Spots and Tamworths, and are mostly kept outdoors in small groups with their own shelter arks, at our farm, or farms chosen by us with the same high standards.

True to the adage that you get out only what you put in, they are fed on a ration of mainly cereals with a low protein mix for slow-growth to produce a well-balanced blend of lean and fat pork. They are also treated to excess vegetables from the gardens and windfall apples in the autumn.

And remember, these are rare breed pigs, once the only ones available in this country, before the commercial ones were developed to create lean meat at all costs. And as we are all now becoming so aware, the biggest casualty of lean meat is flavour. Fat is where the flavour originates - you don't have to eat it of course, but fat creates a self-basting wrap, allowing the flavour to permeate the flesh as it cooks. Take the fat away and you might as well cook a piece of cardboard.

And why rare breeds? They grow slowly and they like being outdoors, producing pork that has a unique flavour.

'Commercial' pigs are standardised creatures; they are all weaned at an early stage, fattened quickly on bland, high protein diets which often include medicines - many growers taking the view that prevention at any cost is better than cure at any cost - and all kept at the same uniform temperature, in huge, computer-controlled sheds. Their short lives are basically without shape, or character, producing a meat that is equally without flavour, or character.

And don't forget the other joy of a whole pig: spit roasting and pit roasting.

Okay, so we're not as skilled in the arts of spit roasting a pig as our U.S cousins, but, roasting spits are the key to glorious pork.

Have a read of Pork Bits to learn a litle more about spit/pit roasting.