If you are familiar with modern day homesteading, I am sure you have heard of Kunekune pigs. The Kunekune breed has become increasingly popular in recent years.
Why is the Kunekune breed so popular?
The Kune has become popular for their unique characteristics. They are an extremely docile breed that can be raising on pasture. They are a grazing breed to the majority of their diet should be forages (such as hay or grass). This makes them more economical for those who cannot buy grain in bulk and or grow their own grains.
Common Misconceptions
Kunekunes have become commonly known as the breed that will never root. Unfortunately, that is not true. If they have soft ground to root, they will. Though, the extent of the rooting is often very minimal. If you have a pen that is soggy from rain or melting snow, they may root it up a bit.
How to Feed Kunekunes
There is a lot of information online on how to feed your kunes. Besides giving fresh water daily, we found that giving them unlimited access to good quality hay (alfalfa hay is ideal for us in Alberta, Canada) soaked grains (oats, barley, peas), black oil sunflower seeds (otherwise referred to as BOSS) and a hog grower supplement works best for our farm.
You will find other farms prefer to feed pelleted hog grower, fermented grains, corn, soy, whey, etc. It will really depend on genetics, your climate and your animal husbandry. As you raise your Kunekunes, you will have to monitor their body condition score (BCS) to keep track of how well your feed is working for them.
The American Kunekune Pig Society(AKKPS) has lots of great resources available to help get you started on how much to feed your kune. But don’t be afraid to experiment a bit and adjust your ingredients.
Kunekunes can also have kitchen or garden scraps. Majority if these scraps should be vegetables and fruit. But you can also offer smaller amounts of bread products and dairy products.
Things to Avoid Feeding Your Kunekune
More in-depth information can be found on the American Kunekune Pig Society page, but here is a quick list to get started.
- Onions
- Chocolate
- Salt
- Bones
- Meat and Meat Products
- Fatty Foods
- Sugary Foods
- Apples and Pear Seeds
- Wild Mushrooms
- Potatoes
- Raw Kidney Beans or Lima Beans
- Rhubarb Leaves
- Sweet Potato
- Brassica Leaves or Seeds (Cabbage, Broccoli, Kale, Cauliflower, Mustard)
- Night Shade Plants
- Pet Foods (dog food, cat food, etc)
- Moldy Food of Any Kind
- Raw Bread Dough
How to Make Your Kunekune Work For Your Homestead
Kunekunes are extremely helpful on our homestead. Not only do we butcher them for our freezers, they are amazing at working in our garden.
At the end of each garden harvest season, we fence of our garden with electric netting and put our Kunekunes in. These pigs are gentle enough not to make a huge mess, but they are strong enough to turn all the soil in our garden. They are great at cleaning up the left over vines, carrots, beats, weeds, etc. But they also leave behind the best fertilizer for next year!
Raising Kunekunes to Butcher
If you are looking to raise a pig with huge pork bellies and extra large porkchop cuts, the Kunekune breed is not for you. Expecting a Kunekune pig to perform the same as a Landrace pig would be the same as expecting Highland cattle to preform the same as Angus cattle. They are two very different breeds developed to be different. Each have their pros and cons. But you need to select the breed that fits your expectations, lifestyle, feed availability, etc.
The Kunekune is a slower growing breed. That means that if you buy weaned piglets (8 weeks old) in the spring, you should now expect to butcher them until the following spring. You may be able to butcher them sooner, but I wouldn’t expect to do so. If you do not want to raise butcher pigs over winter, this is not the breed for you.
We chose to butcher all of our Kunes ourselves. As a family of 6, we would butcher a minimum of 2 every year. When butchering our Kunes, we like to make up:
- hams (cured and smoked)
- ribs with loins attached
- loins
- porkchops
- pork trim for our venison sausages or smokies
- fat and lard for rendering
- shoulder with legs attached (trotters removed)
When we have a smaller Kunekune to butcher, we will cut the entire animal into halves or quarters slow roast that for larger gatherings.
But if we have a lot of wild game meat (deer, moose, elk, etc.) that we want to make into sausage, we use all of the Kunekune meat as “pork trim: in our recipes. We have found the Kune meat is the perfect addition to our wild game sausage recipes.
Kunekunes Are Not The Perfect Fit For Every Homestead
No breed of pigs is a perfect fit for everybody. Raise what works for you. Raise what you enjoy. And raise what you want to eat. We absolutely love to raise, process and consume our Kunekune pork. But we know they aren’t the right fit for every family.
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