Hello Folks,
This is one of those post that I am sharing cuz its interesting to me but i don’t have the answer, so if you do, I would love to hear it!
I raised Angelo on the same diet as the piglets and Miss Piggy, I try and stay away from soy, and corn, at least some fresh food daily and garden extra’s etc.
Now on the piglets I can’t say that I saw this but they had not real extra fats at that time, they were so young when done, and I don’t know if this is breed related (but that does not make sense to me as they are considered a lard pig)
My fat does not melt.. laugh if you will but when you need to add fat to a pan full of bacon, its just odd.. I need to add fat to the pork hamburger if I want it to not be dry, I didn’t have any left over to render of the back fat and the left lard was ground to go for sausage, I have lots of beef tallow so I didn’t much worry about it.
I have to admit that I find it very odd, now my research had told me that soy done improperly or even properly can cause the fat to change on the pigs, and effect the texture of the meat as well.
N.A. Pork is considered mushy when compared to pork in Europe, and they say that was related directly to the amount of corn in our pigs diet, I can’t disagree there, my pork is firmer and more flavoured then anything that I have had for years, even more so then the last time I raised my own pork, as they were feed corn at that time, and they were certainly better then store but not nearly as tracked and or carefully figured out as the current pigs diet..
I can’t help but wonder how finishing the current crop of piglets on cows milk will effect the flavour and the fat, I know that milk finished piglets are considered excellent, second only to pigs finished naturally on acrons/nuts down in the deep south, which are to be considered one of the best there is, but we take what we can get.
Now I really don’t mind, its just interesting to me, but I want to put it out there and ask, if you as a farm gate buyer got pork that the fat chops, bacon etc, didn’t melt out, and who’s mince was that lean, would you be happy and just work around it, or would you find it a issue?
Just another Day on the Farm 
Okay, so I was wandering on your site earlier and came across a poster for grass raised beef and it mentioned there how many less calories it has and how much less marbling…
Is it a possibility that this is the same for your pork?
Mr D is wondering if it’s *because* you are feeding them so carefully. May I ask what Angelo ate? And how does that compare to what a pig on a typical farm a hundred years ago ate.
Because the men were joking about it at the mill (asking the foreman if he were ready to go to market), we know the Mennonites around here send their pigs to market at 295 lbs. How big was Angelo?
Ok, I do think that the way I am feeding them must be the difference, but the question is which part or is it a combo effect..
The average pig that goes to market for most is indeed right around 200 pds, for our own pork I tend to hold till closer to 300 pds and angelo came in closer to 400 hundred pds going in as woud miss piggy if she was to go right now, (not that I am planning that, just using it for a example).
When I was looking at butchers that was a issue, some of them didn’t want to do as big as I wanted done, but the one i work with is good, he figures if I want it that way, I can have it that way.
As comepared to a pig a hundred years ago, its a good question but the answer would be, where was the pig raised and grown, because that would have changed based on that information, example my mom always raised the pork we had on “alberta” chop and skim milk or clabber, plus all the garden extra’s..
Alberta chop would have been a mix of ground barley, wheat, and oats, no corn, no soy, no beet pulp. it was a mix that could be feed to all the critters, cow, horse, goats, pigs..
But that mix would have been different even in alberta, based on where you lived, and I would imagine to a point that is true of all pigs across N.A. I doubt that anyone could say, this is what the average pig was feed a hundred years ago.