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The Swallow Belly
Knowing the history to build a healthy Future
imports of Swallow Belly Mangalitsa to the US 2007 - 2016
Heath Putnam was the one who imported the first 29 Mangalitsas (Swallow Belly color) from Austria to the US in 2007.
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Twenty five swallow belly Mangalitsa pigs were able to leave the quarantine in New York several months later. Four sows had to be put down because of negative test results in the USDA quarantine in NY. That original export consisted of 2 boars and 23 sows. This was the base of the swallow belly herd in the US.
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Putnam named the boars Hans and Franz. That's the reason why you may find these two boar names on a lineage certificate when you buy swallow belly breeding stock. With two imported boars you still have a small genetic base; Hans and Franz genetics are likely in most of the original swallow belly Mangalitsas and their progeny in the US.
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In 2010/11 was an import from Austria to Auburn University, we are still checking details of this import, but as far as we know is no breeding stock sold till now.
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In 2016 Barbara Meyer zu Altenschildesche - Royal Mangalitsa Netherland, exported 2 swallow belly boars and 5 sows to Tim Winkler in California. These animals came from 3 different Dutch breeders.
They are totally unrelated to the Austrian Mangalitsas that came over in 2007.
More details will follow when we will have gathered the correct information.
Here are some links where you can read articles about the import from 2007 and the first years:
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The Spokesman-Review - Wed., Nov. 28, 2007
Edible Seattle - Spring 2008
Wooly Pigs Blog- The Blog of Keith Putnam -Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Whats in the Name? Before introducing Mangalitsa to the American market, he had to make a basic decision: How to spell the breed.
Wooly Pigs Blog- The Blog of Keith Putnam -Tuesday, December 31, 2008
The boar Franz was one of the 2 boars that were imported from Austria in 2007. Hans was the other. Here a picture of Franz and a comment from Keith about this boar.
Wooly Pigs Blog- The Blog of Keith Putnam -Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The boar Franz interesting to see he was almost black, without the "common" for Hungarian Swallow Belly (white belly) coloring. His legs and belly do not show the white pattern. It could be that he is of Serbian Swallow Belly genetics. Here you can read that there are 2 different varieties of Serbian Swallow Belly:
"There are two varieties of which one from the western breeding region is called "Budanovac” viarety named after the village Budanovci, which has a greater part of pigmented body (entire head, body and the sides of the body and the legs from the outer-lateral side to the claws).
The second variety - "Otok" and "Lasa" named after the village of Otok in the western part of the Srem region, with the legs pigmented only to the hock joint and the lower part of the papilla is white. The Otok variety has regularly strongly developed bristles or “feathers” which the “Budanovac” variety lacks ot are not so developed (Briznej 1948)." TREASURE-MANGALITSA LOCAL PIG BREED IN SERBIA Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication
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