Pigs

Pigs roll in the mud to keep cool.

They have a snout on their face.

The snout helps them to smell food.

Pigs have small eyes and some have a curly tail.

Pigs can grow to be very big.

There are many different kinds of pig that pig farmers choose to keep. Some pigs have a pink skin but there are brown, white and black skinned pigs too. Something in skin called pigment makes the colour and it's different for different pig breeds.

The three main breeds of pigs that are farmed are Large White, Landrace and the Duroc.

The pig family
Male pigs are called boars. The females are called sows and the babies are called piglets.

Names for a group of pigs: a drift, team or herd of pigs.
When a group is being moved they are a drove of pigs.
A group of young ones is a litter or a farrow of piglets.
A group of wild pigs is a sounder of wild pigs or a passel of hogs.

Body
Pigs have snouts, which help them find food by smell. They have an excellent sense of smell because they have poor eyesight. They have short tails that are often, but not always, curly. Pigs have hair, called bristles (say briss-uls).

Adult pigs have 44 teeth. Like human teeth, they are protected by outer coatings of enamel. Boars have a long front tooth on each side that is called a tusk. The tusks stick up outside their mouth. Farmers often cut off the tusks.

Pigs do not sweat, so they wallow in mud to cool their bodies. The mud also protects a pig from insect bites and from sunburn. Because they roll in mud, pigs often look mucky and people think that they are dirty animals. But pigs are clean animals! They will have a place which they use as a toilet which is well away from the places where they eat or drink.

Diet
Farmers feed pigs on grains such as corn, wheat, oats or barley. Farm pigs are also fed greens and dried food made from meat, and some vitamins and minerals.

A home for a pig
A home for a pig must keep the pig dry and warm in winter, and cool in summer.
A home for a pig must be strong and well built. A piglet will be able to squeeze through any small openings in walls or fences and escape. Big pigs are very strong and can dig under fences and can even break down a poorly built house. Bricks and concrete are often used to build a house for a pig. A house of bricks or concrete is strong and can be kept clean. Farmers put straw on the floor of a pig's house to make it comfortable for the animals.

Life Cycle
Sows, the female pigs, give birth to live young about 4 months after they have mated with a male pig. Usually there are about 8 to 12 piglets born at one time. Sometimes there may be a lot more. The piglets drink milk from their mother for about 5 weeks. After this, they begin to eat solid food.

Most pigs are fully grown by the time they are three and a half, but some pigs will keep growing until they are four or five years old. Life span seems to vary according to the type of pig, but generally speaking pigs live for about 10-15 years.

What do pigs provide for humans?
The meat we get from pigs is pork, ham or bacon. Ham comes from the heavy muscled rear quarters of the pig. Bacon is meat from the back and sides that has been smoked or salted or dried to preserve it.
Many sausages are made using pork. Pigs also provide us with leather, brushes made from their hair, and soap made using their fat. Some kinds of medicines are made from pigs' glands. Their bones are made into glue.

Why do baby animals look like their parents?
When a male and a female animal mate, sperm from his body gets into eggs inside the female's body. The sperm and egg join together to form a cell. All animals start as a single cell. The cell grows and splits to form new cells which keep growing and dividing until there are millions of cells. These cells grow into a young animal that looks, in some ways, like its mother and father. This is because the cells are made up of parts which come from both the mother's egg and the father's sperm.

Why do pigs have curly tails?
We can't find out why yet. But we are still looking. However we found that some pig farmers cut off a bit of the piglets' tails soon after they are born. This is because piglets often chew each other's tails!

Where do pigs come from originally?
The pigs that farmers keep today have evolved from wild boar which were first domesticated in parts of Europe and Asia about 10000 years ago.

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Pigs (2006).[Online], Available: www.kidcyber.com.au