Cultivation
The Choctaw tribe still raises these hogs in Oklahoma. They require relatively little care and are traditionally allowed to run free on open range and forage for acorns, berries, invertebrates, roots, vegetables, and whatever else they can find. With the aid of trained dogs, hogs are rounded up periodically, earmarked, and sorted. The dog usually used for this purpose is the Catahoula Leopard dog, another animal of probable Spanish origin. While Choctaw Hogs kept in confinement can become very tame, some may be "amazed at the speed and agility of Choctaw hogs."
Pigs kept for market are fattened with corn to improve their value. A paper from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine describes the Choctaw as "large and fat" and reports:
As hog breeding more favors the industrial organization and breeding of white hogs for lean pork production these remnants of the Spanish strains that were adapted for extensive systems are becoming rarer and rarer.
The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy reports that Choctaws do not have a very valuable "market carcass". Lacking economic incentive, commercial interests are not drawn to help in the Choctaw's conservation and there is no official Choctaw Hog registry for this breed.
Read more about this topic: Choctaw Hog
Famous quotes containing the word cultivation:
“If the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic circle would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent conversation, a means of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation which these intellectual advantages would confer.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Let these memorials of built stone music’s
enduring instrument, of many centuries of
patient cultivation of the earth, of English
verse ...”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)