Female presence in the pens pays off

It’s ladies’ day every day of the week down on the farm at Hayton Grange in the East Riding where all of the 3,500 pigs are females and live contentedly outside. This is where Anna Longthorp’s section of the family business, that largely runs out of Howden 10 miles away as LKL Farming with her father Richard at the helm, trades as Anna’s Happy Trotters.

“We started with the idea five years ago,” says Anna. “We’d always had pigs born and raised outside since we started with them 20 years ago. They were here to make better use of the grain we were producing on our arable farm but we had then fattened them indoors. That classed them as outdoor-bred, but the customers we were supplying at the time wanted us to go fully free range and fatten them 100 per cent outside as well.

“It was the same time as all the celebrity TV chefs were talking about free range and since I was running the fattening side I spotted the opportunity to have a better control of setting the price that customers paid us.”

Anna’s idea was that those who were looking for completely free-range outdoor pigs would pay a premium price, although it would lead to a good deal more running about to get the brand known initially, and business has grown significantly.

“Marketing is by far my number one, most important and time-consuming job. I now deal with around 50 butchers, restaurants and farm shops as well as wholesalers.

“My customers want higher quality meat and it is the female pigs that provide that. That’s why at weaning we select out all the females and bring them here to Hayton at four-weeks-old finishing them at around five to six-months-old. So it’s a girls-only set-up here and it works well. The males go into our other indoor breeding units.”

Anna breeds her own stock based on a Landrace X Duroc sow and a Pietrain boar. The Duroc is well-known for its outdoor qualities of hardiness and the Pietrain ensures low levels of back fat – a formula that works well, she says. Anna’s Happy Trotters roam on sandy land in batches of 100 per acre on the 200 acre site.

“It’s hard work of up to nine to 10 hours a day and I have three men working with me. It’s not as technical a job, nor as scientific as the breeding unit because it is more laborious, constantly bedding up, feeding up and selecting to go to slaughter.

“We send around 300 a week and the weight they go at depends on what they are going to be used for.”

Since all of Anna’s Happy Trotters are happily trundling about in their respective acres of land the weight of each pig is largely calculated by eyesight.

“We do have scales and we put one or two on to them in order to get our eye in but then we select the rest wholly by eyesight. It is quite an art and takes a lot of practice.

“We supply a certain amount of full carcasses out to butchers and farm shops and have our own butchery process that allows us to supply such as boneless pork and shoulders.”

Anna supplies one of the county’s newest farm shops, based in South Cave, and last week the combination of Anna’s stock and Drewton’s Farm Shop’s baker Kath Brown led to a major national award. Kath’s sausage rolls, made to her own very special recipe, won Pork Bakery Product of the year at the BPEX Awards.

Anna began pig farming when she was just eight-years-old, much to the amusement of her friends, but her business acumen combined with her animal husbandry has brought her some of the most prestigious industry awards in recent years including Pig Producer of the Year in the BPEX awards and a Deliciously Yorkshire Supreme Champion for her belly pork.

So if you’re looking for a sausage roll this weekend 
you should try Drewton’s Farm Shop just outside 
South Cave on the Market Weighton road.