Pig Facts 9

•  11. People with allergies sometimes have pigs as pets because they have hair not fur. They are highly social and intelligent animals which are trainable and can be taught tricks. China has the most domesticated pigs in the world! The United States is second.
• 12. Pork has a high protein content (around 20%), which is important for muscle building and for keeping organs healthy.
• 13. Scoring the skin of the hog with a sharp blade, whilst roasting, and then rubbing salt in vigorously, produces amazing crunchy pork crackling.
• 14. Although generally considered to be a white meat, pork is grouped with red meat in nutritional studies. With the fat trimmed, the meat is leaner than most other domesticated animals. A third of that in the UK is made up of our favourite breakfast dish the bacon sandwich. Pork is the most consumed meat in the UK.
• 15. An average pig eats five pounds of feed each day, or a ton of food every year.
• 16. A litter of piglets is called a farrow. New-born piglets learn to run to their mothers’ voices and to recognize their own names. Mother pigs sing to their young while nursing.
• 17. There are about 2 billion pigs on earth. In Denmark there twice as many pigs as people! They can also be known as a baconer, chopper, sucker, piglet, weaner, porker, sow, boar, and stag.
• 18. A sow’s pregnancy lasts 114 days. They can give birth to between 7 and 12 piglets, twice a year. The largest litter of piglets was 37 by a sow in Australia. 36 piglets were born alive and 33 survived.
• 19. The largest piglet ever farrowed was a stillborn 5lb 4oz male. Average weight for a piglet is 3 lbs. The average sow gives birth to 8 to 12 pigs at a time and not all have curly tails. Adult pigs usually weigh between 300 and 700 lbs.
• 20. Pigs communicate constantly with one another by grunting. Their squeal can reach up to 115 decibels, 3 decibels higher than the sound of a supersonic Concorde.