Pigs are a great way of assisting land management in a natural and sustainable way, as part of a broader program or clearing a small area covered in weeds and unwanted undergrowth. We’ve been aiming to sort out a piece of land called The Hopping and Stocking that we have that isn’t suitable for growing crops. To that end we set up The Piggy Bank project with a view to our customers supporting the farm to convert it into Woodland Grazing, supporting our stabiliser cattle and improving the biodiversity whilst sequestering carbon. To do that we’ve employed the services of some very keen young lads… four Tamworth Piggies… AND for very good reason:

As omnivores, pigs have a tremendous rooting (or mooting as we call it in Herefordshire) capacity. Their natural ability to cultivate the soil allows them to clear ground quickly as well as providing natural fertiliser in the form of manure, leaving the land ready to reseed. Pigs can clear a vast majority of ground vegetation including bracken, couch grass and brambles (particularly useful in our case0 . They reduce the need for weed control and create seed beds for natural regeneration. We have sectioned out our bank so that the pigs have small areas to root through first and they are working on their first block as we speak.