THE owner of a rare breed farm has spoken of his delight as a litter of rare piglets were born at the Suffolk tourist attraction.Baylham House Rare Breeds Farm is home to the rare Large Black pigs, including sows Mrs Pugwash and Prudence.

THE owner of a rare breed farm has spoken of his delight as a litter of rare piglets were born at the Suffolk tourist attraction.

Baylham House Rare Breeds Farm is home to the rare Large Black pigs, including sows Mrs Pugwash and Prudence. The breed were the most common during the 1900s, but by the early 1960s disappeared from the rural scene as they were not suited to mass produced farming.

Today the breed is in a critical state, but Mrs Pugwash has delighted the farm by producing nine piglets which are on show to the public in a special maternity unit.

With long ears and a long deep body, the Large Black is Britain's only all-black pig. One of the country's oldest pig breeds, the Large Black had its origins in the Old English Hog of the 16th and 17th centuries and by the late 1880s the main strongholds were in East Anglia and Devon and Cornwall.

In the early part of the century Large Blacks were frequently crossed with Large White and Middle White pigs, to produce both porkers and baconers. In 1919, Large Blacks outnumbered all other breeds at the Royal Show, with 121 being exhibited.

Richard Storer, owner of the farm, said: "On Tuesday afternoon, when feeding Mrs Pugwash and Prudence, our sows who have been spending the winter in a pen with Malcolm the Large Black boar, my son Neil remarked on the rapid development that was apparent with Mrs Pugwash's udder.

"We knew she was pregnant but she had not been with the boar long enough on this occasion for piglets to be arriving in the immediate future. We had also noticed that in recent days she had been lying down a lot and was larger than her sister Prudence.

"Putting two and two together we looked up our records and found that she could have been covered by the boar in October, but on that occasion they were only together for a very short time and as we had not seen any amorous activity and had not thought that she was in season, we had assumed that nothing had happened.