Happy as pigs in mud at Mt Russell operation

Their venture into pork production began eight years ago when a neighbour had pigs.

“I was working for them and it seemed like a good idea but I thought we could do it better – our neighbour has closed down now and we’re still going,” Mr Stewart said.

The couple turned the idea into a full-time business after two years of research. 

They run 20 breeding sows on 32 hectares at Mt Russell, near Inverell, selling their pork to city based restaurants.

“We have large white boars and old English black sows, which gives us a blue merle, which is mainly for the instincts in our sows,” Ms Johnson said.

“Then we join the blue merle sows to a white boar, which gives us the good hams.”

They’ve slowly bred up over the years, changing boars every few years to introduce new genetics.

“We’ve found that you’re better off breeding your own, especially if you’ve got a free-range system, because it’s harder for pigs from an intensive production to adjust,” Ms Johnson said.

“With pigs, mud is their sunscreen and repellent, but often pigs from an intensive production won’t know how to wallow so they’re not suited to being outdoors.”

The boars run with sows year round, allowing the couple to have pigs ready for their market at any time during the year.

The pigs are allowed to roam, but are also fed a cracked barley ration.

“In an ideal world, pigs on free range should farrow twice a year,” Ms Johnson said.

“The sows are in pig for 115 days, then the piglets are weaned by the time they’re eight weeks old, and that’s when the sows go back with the boar.

“We usually get 10 to 12 piglets in a litter.”

The piglets are sold as sucklings, reaching about 14 kilograms liveweight when they’re processed.

“They’re sold straight off their mums,” Ms Johnson said.

“At eight weeks they’re usually about 25kg, so sometimes we’ll have to send them at six weeks.”

Ms Johnson said there was plenty of demand for pork, especially free-range pork.

“Our market will buy what we’ve got when we’ve got it,” she said.

“If we miss the market this week, they’ll still take those bigger pigs for the following week.

“There’s very good demand for our pork because people want free-range, fresh, Australian pork.”

Among the biggest job is monitoring farrowing, with foxes a major pest.

“They’ll take full litters in a night,” Ms Johnson said.

“We’ve had to put doors on our hutches so we can lock them in where the foxes can’t get to them, but we’ll have the odd sow who will farrow in the paddock, so we’ve spent nights with our pigs to protect them.”

PIG owners are required to meet standards monitored by state governments and industry authorities.