Meet the Yorkshire pig farmer devoted to keeping the Gloucester Old Spot breed going

Mandy Garbutt has her small pedigree herd on five acres at Fowgill Farm in Ingleby Arncliffe, where she and her builder husband Paul moved to when a neighbouring farmer told them the farm was up for sale. He wanted the land but not the farmhouse.

Mandy said it signalled the start of her love affair with the Gloucester Old Spot breed which now sees her secretary of the UK breed club, a regular on the show circuit and editor of the society’s magazine.

“I always said that if we ever got some land I would have a red tractor and three pigs. When we moved here Paul got me a little Kubota tractor and bought me a place on a pig keeping course with rare breed specialist Tony York at Paradise Pigs in 2004.

“I fell in love with Gloucester Old Spots and everything just snowballed from there. When I took advice from the breed club over how I should start it was to get three to fatten and take through to finishing. That way if we hadn’t liked it we wouldn’t haven’t committed ourselves by laying out money for sows.

“We had two goes. Firstly with three, then with two and by then we had decided we would like to rear our own piglets. We had been buying them straight off their mothers’ teats before then, something I didn’t want to do with ours.

“I always wean mine off their mothers for a week before they go to their new homes.”

Mandy has four sows currently and said that each has its own distinct personality. “Chloe is the matriarch and she’s a right grumpy, cantankerous old mare. She will only live with the boar and nobody else; Dolly is much more laid back.

“She’s like, ‘let me put my shades on, oh I’m giving birth’. She’s also a cheeky monkey. She’s got piglets on her at the moment and I let her out of her pen to have a rest from them. Next thing, I wondered where she had gone and found her in the feed shed.

“She’d helped herself to a bag of feed and was working her way through the sugar beet heap!

“Grace is Chloe’s daughter, but nothing like her. She’s an absolute angel, dead soft and nice; Lottie is the youngest sow in the herd at the moment and is due her first litter in April.

“During lockdown we went over to Cumbria to get her as she’s a very rare bloodline and as a breed society we are trying to spread the rare lines across the UK. She’s a Princess Anne line. She’s very laid back and placid.”

Mandy said she is always conscious of having the next sow ready to be able to replace one that has served her time.

“Seven years of age is a good age for a sow. My next one will be Poppy who is just six months old right now. I’m growing her on and will show her this year in shows around July. She’s a bundle of mischief.

“I have another young show sow, Patsy. I’ll show her in September. One of her brothers will also be in the show team, he’s unnamed as yet but looks like a Barry to me. I’ll also pick two from Dolly’s current litter bringing my show team to five.”

Mandy said her love of showing wasn’t quite so instantaneous as her love of the breed.

“We had a first go at showing in 2005 but it was when we tried again a few years later and went to shows like Ryedale, Thornton-le-Dale, Driffield, Honley and Egton that we really enjoyed it. We made good friends and the family we knock about with most are the Horsleys of Acaster Malbis.

“Paul can’t always get to the shows, but I don’t mind going on my own as they have become my show family.

“I came home from the Great Yorkshire Show one year when Paul hadn’t been with me and he asked how many I’d gone with, because I’d come back with one more. I’d bought a young boar I’d seen in one of the classes.

“Our best show result was when Winston, my little seven-month old boar got third place in the Interbreed championship at the Great Yorkshire Show in 2017 and was only beaten by two Landrace pigs.

“He also took reserve champion in the Pig of The Year at Cheshire Show. He’s now enjoying himself on the south coast.”

Mandy said that there are two things that are very important to the future of the Gloucester Old Spot and any rare pedigree breed of pig, sheep or cattle.

“I would urge others to buy pedigree animals because that way you are helping grow the pedigree breed - and there is an old saying that is very true.

“You have to eat them to keep them. If you don’t then there won’t be the breeders around.”