Meet our Berkshires
Excellent foragers, the superpower of this heritage breed is converting grass and legumes to well-marbled, lean, delicious pork with high-carcass yields. And along the way, Berkshire hogs are a pleasure to have on the farm with their friendly, calm, intelligent personalities.
Care
We rotate our purebred Berkshire hogs on pastures and in woodlots throughout the warm months of the year. Berkshire hogs are excellent at removing underbrush and tag alders in the poorly managed wooded areas we inherited on our farm here in the Upper Peninsula, and their efforts are allowing sunlight to reach the ground so that pasture grasses can grow. Our Berkshire hogs clearly enjoy the work we've given them. We supplement their forage with locally produced grains free from animal by-products, stale bread from our local artisan bakery, and food scraps from the gardens.
Breeding
We began our own Berkshire hog breeding program in 2015 and added Tamworth crosses in 2020. Our purebred Berkshire and Berkshire-Tamworth sows have spring and fall litters. Our early spring litters are born in a custom-designed hoop house, where they are kept safe from the still-frosty Upper Peninsula weather. Our late summer litters are born on pasture, wherever their mothers think is best. Our Berkshire and Berkshire-Tamworth sows have retained their mothering instincts and are proven to be excellent mothers with large, healthy litters. We have never used farrowing crates. We consider them inhumane, and we have found them to be unnecessary.
We offer purebred Berkshire, Berkshire-Tamworth breeding stock and feeder pigs from our spring and fall litters. We also raise several Berkshire hogs to market weight each year, and offer the end products as whole and halves (reservation only) and by the cut at our on-site farm store.
