Pigs were recorded in Domesday as having woodland to support them. Note that woodlands supporting pigs was primarily comprised of oak, since the pigs fed on the acorns they dropped.
In the modern world, you can manage about 5 pigs per acre. You should be able to do that many pigs or more per acre in the medieval world since the animals were physically smaller for the most part. So in an 80 acre pannage woodland, expect about 400 swine.
Some tree types are far more damaged by pig foraging than others since, if they don't get the yummy acorns, they tend to dig up roots, eat the saplings and do other damage. So the oak and the pig are good neighbors. The elder or the olive tree, or even the wild apple tree, all tend to suffer far more damage when used as pannage.
I walked some extremely undulating oak woodland valleys recently, which seemed oddly absent of squirrels but perhaps that's normal close to a windy coastline - as a result the floor was completely coated with acorns. I can imagine the more agile swine depicted would be far more suited to gobbling them up in such a challenging landscape; I'm pretty sure a modern pig would have little chance of safely navigating the slopes.
A pig gone feral will adapt very very quickly. The'll get fitter, their hide and hair thicker. Within a year a pink factory pig will be quickly transformed. They're very intelligent and would have no trouble handling that terrain.
Oh interesting, I had assumed some level of gradual genetic changes in domestication were responsible. So you are suggesting it's mostly phenotypical changes that could even be somewhat reversed in an individual... I wonder how far a new born would revert to what is being depicted in the illustrations.
I can only speak from personal experience (what I've seen), but I googled and found this:
> "Any pig that gets out can revert back in a matter of months to a state where it can exist in the wild," said Brown. "It will get hairy, grow tusks and get aggressive. They're so good at adapting, and with their scavenging nature, they can get by pretty much anywhere."
Just personal experience. I googled and found this:
>
"Any pig that gets out can revert back in a matter of months to a state where it can exist in the wild," said Brown. "It will get hairy, grow tusks and get aggressive. They're so good at adapting, and with their scavenging nature, they can get by pretty much anywhere."
Margaret Atwood's book Oryx and Crake references this. I don't remember the exact plot, but somewhere in there civilization collapses and pigs go feral within years.
Yes, I'm from Extremadura (west of Spain), and we have a lot of pigs roaming on the fields. Cows and sheep too, just drive down any road and you will see them.
Answer one: we all have our hobbies; actually pig rearing is a bit quaint but perhaps not as obscure a hobbie as you might think. Like competitive marrow growing or something.
Answer two: pig farmers have sons and daughters who don't necessarily follow in their footsteps, just as you and I probably know more about <what our parents did/do> than the average <what we did/do>.
I used to actively design roleplaying games, and medieval agricultural yields have been a passion of mine since the original Chivalry & Sorcery Sourceboook (1978)[1]. In particular, in the 1990s I wanted to understand Domesday Book in detail to project what a medieval farm would look like as part of Pendragon roleplaying game, which I owned the rights to for a time when I had a company called Green Knight Publishing. The game is back with Chaosium these days, and I remain a fan of the RPG.
Source 1: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/discover-domesd...
In the modern world, you can manage about 5 pigs per acre. You should be able to do that many pigs or more per acre in the medieval world since the animals were physically smaller for the most part. So in an 80 acre pannage woodland, expect about 400 swine.
Some tree types are far more damaged by pig foraging than others since, if they don't get the yummy acorns, they tend to dig up roots, eat the saplings and do other damage. So the oak and the pig are good neighbors. The elder or the olive tree, or even the wild apple tree, all tend to suffer far more damage when used as pannage.
Source 2: https://acrcd.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Pigs-and-Trees....