Thread: Otago University needs Feral Pig DNA Samples

This project was proposed a few years ago, but stalled. The Rare Breeds Society was contacted again last week, by one of the Professors, to say that the research team is now ready to begin the study. They've got the South Island pigs samples covered, but they want me to co-ordinate 15 samples from pigs killed/caught from various areas of bush around the North Island. They also need pictures of each kill/capture to identify the possible breed or traits of the individual pig.

The DNA of each pig will be compared with other feral pig populations in NZ and from there, the DNA profiles of the NZ pig populations will be compared to overseas pigs, to see where each type of pig may have originated. The Canterbury Blue pigs look like they may have distant relatives in an area of China, but more research still has to be done, to get a definitive answer.

So to those who volunteered last time and any other pig hunters who would like to help collecting samples from the ears of wild pigs, for DNA research, please email me at; inger@keymer.name and let me know your contact details, so I can post you a collection container, which has a special preservative in it, to keep the sample from going bad before the scientists get to make a DNA profile of the sample. If I include the prepaid packaging for returning the sample, it won't cost you anything, other than a good reason for another hunting trip.

I'm hoping to get volunteers from all around the North Island, so I can get a good representation of the various genetic groups from the bush in the area you hunt in. From the Rare Breeds Society's point of view, it would be great to get samples from any remnant Captain Cooker, feral Kunekune or European Wild Boar populations that might still be around. If you know of any and are willing to hunt for one, please let me know. I know that a lot of the original pig populations have crossbred with released or escaped domestic breed pigs, which muddies the DNA a bit, but we'll see what we can get.

Let me know if there are any questions I haven't covered.

Many thanks for any help you can give me,
Inger Keymer
Rare Breeds Society of NZ

@moonhunt

I could give it a nudge , we have what we call 'Euro' strains here and a few others as well

That sounds great Moonhunt. I'll email you, if I can guess your correct address from your posting.

moonhunt@xtra

Inger , what a cool study . Will the information ever get published ?

just send ya smelly pig hunting vests in

Is the wild pig of NZ rare? Or are you looking at sub species?

Yes, Munsey, the results will be published, though I don't know in which publication, as that's a long way off yet.

No Hamish, I'm afraid hunting vests won't do the job. We need nice fresh samples that are uncontaminated by all your other catches.

Gibo, we're really just interested to find out what's out there in the bush. If there is a group of pigs with unique genetics (like we found in the Auckland Island pigs), we may try to live capture some, to breed and keep the genetics from becoming extinct. We've done that with the Auckland Island pigs, Kunekune pigs (which are no longer rare), the Arapawa Island pigs and the latest project was the Canterbury Blue pig, which, by the way, is the best tasting pork I've ever eaten. No wonder it was brought to NZ in the very early days, we think perhaps by Asian goldminers? But that's not proven yet.

We've found that the best way to preserve a breed, is by making them useful or desirable to people, for some reason or other, to keep breeding them. They all have some useful trait or other, to make them worth keeping by somebody. We're having a hard time getting enough people breeding the Arapawa pig, as they retain their wildness, the same with European Wildboar, but Kunekune pigs were taken on as pets in a big way. I don't know of anyone keeping a Captain Cooker pig herd to breed purebreds? They may be long-gone? I would guess they would need a fairly dedicated person to persevere with the pigs' temperament. Most people want pigs that don't try to eat them.

Anyway, that's some of the work that the Rare Breeds Conservation Society does. Take a look at our website and see if you'd like to get involved in preserving the genetics of NZ's unique feral or some of our heritage breed animals and poultry. We even have a Gene-bank to store semen and embryos of some of the rarest breeds of animals in NZ.

Inger your canterbury blue pigs , are they confined to any where in particular . Or on the whole wide spread . ? ( Canterbury being vast )

Just a side note canterbury has a lot of matagauri which pigs love to hide in , which is almost exactly the same colour of your blue pigs and very hard to see Hence why I think the thrive . Black pigs stick out like dogs balls and tend to be seen and killed .

I'm not sure how widely spread the Canterbury Blues are Munsey? You would need to talk to John Earney (Rare Breeds President) to find that out. He would have more information on the habitat they prefer. You could be right about the Matagauri being more suitable for them to hide in, as their coat is a bluey grey colour, so they'd camouflage nicely.

John's got a small breeding herd of Canterbury Blues. He was selling the meat from the excess males at his Farmers' Market stalls, until the local meat works got bought out by an overseas company and now won't do small butchery lots of meat for the local trade, only export meat. Which means John can't get his meat killed locally, so can't supply his Farmers' Market customers. (He can't get a refund on his very expensive meat seller's licence either). So that's another avenue shut down, for selling heritage breeds meat. If you don't live near an abattoir, getting meat killed legally for the retail market, becomes uneconomical.

Cheers for that , I'm sure there are a lot of your blues with durox in them , was a prolific pig hunter that rumour has it helped them bread up

Well now that we've got some of them being captive bred, we can weed out any that show signs of any other breed in them. The DNA samples that we've taken from them should show up any Duroc genetics, if they in there, as well.

Originally Posted by Inger

I'm not sure how widely spread the Canterbury Blues are Munsey? You would need to talk to John Earney (Rare Breeds President) to find that out. He would have more information on the habitat they prefer. You could be right about the Matagauri being more suitable for them to hide in, as their coat is a bluey grey colour, so they'd camouflage nicely.

John's got a small breeding herd of Canterbury Blues. He was selling the meat from the excess males at his Farmers' Market stalls, until the local meat works got bought out by an overseas company and now won't do small butchery lots of meat for the local trade, only export meat. Which means John can't get his meat killed locally, so can't supply his Farmers' Market customers. (He can't get a refund on his very expensive meat seller's licence either). So that's another avenue shut down, for selling heritage breeds meat. If you don't live near an abattoir, getting meat killed legally for the retail market, becomes uneconomical.

Would you mind answering a couple of questions for us 'Inger'. I have a friend who takes many Coromandel pigs every year.

1/How do we know that the science the taxpayer will be paying for here, will ever be of any use in the future. Or is it just science for science sake.

I mean when I worked for the Forest service we built exclosure plots, put photo points. Vast numbers of workers were involved in pellet counts. That's counting 'shit' in the Forest until the FRI (Forest Research Institute) had warehouses full of useless documents.

These documents must have been useless because since then the Forest Service and DOC have gone ahead and made every elementary mistake in the book. We went ahead and planted and aerial seeded vast amounts of our public land with some of the worst weeds in the world. And now we have rivers choked with lupins, stations that were once clear land are now a thickets of douglas fir, Radiata, silver poplar, and numerous other weeds that science told us would combat erosion.
Just one small example of the useless projects that have involved our native forests

2/ How do we know such information gleaned from these DNA samples will not at some stage be used by some Govt Agency. Tell us why Waikato Regional Council will not make use of this information to launch some form of destruction on our pig population. Waikato Regional Council has already placed our pig in the Coromandel as a pest that has no place on the Peninsula.

Surely you will need the DNA donor to supply an address and a locations where the pig has been taken from. Then you may need the donor to supply the number of pigs a year he takes out of this area. Then the DNA may point to the fact that the pigs in this valley are actually related to the pigs from the Hunga- Gunga valley that has TB and so the inference is that someone has liberated these pigs.
Its all innocent enough until the green rain falls.

Can you put up a copy of the documentation that will accompany the DNA samples.

Scribe.