History of Mangalica

The hungarian mangalica porks: The only pure breed indigenous race remaining.

His ancestor is the "ásatag" pork, so the mangalica porks have a family liasion with the iberico porks.The "szalontai" porks were bred first by romains. In 1833 Prince Milos gives 9 sows and 2 boars from the "Sumadia"porks to Prince Joseph and who cross bred with "bakonyi" and hungarian mountain porks. That's how the mangalica porks was born.

This was such a big succes in the late 1850 that we can find in almost every stock-farm. His golden age was from the end of the XIX century until the end of 1940's. They were exported toward western europe were they kept their good reputation until the apparition of the roman and serbian mangalica appeared between the two world war. After the second world war the fat was replaced by cooking oil on the world market. And the quantity of meat became the most important factor. Their number reduced over the years and in 1991 there was only 198 with pedigree.

Thanks to the demand of the markets and the devotion of the Spanish trading partners from the end of 90's the number of Mangalica pigs have been increasing continuosly. Genes are beeing preserved only in some important installations, at the same time in 180 stations nearly 6000 male pigs are used for breeding purposes. More than 60% of that stock is used by small farms which do not sell products to meet processing factories. It is expected that large factories will slaughter 18-20.000 pigs in the current year.

They exist in 4 colours, most current is the blonde but existe also in black and red. The head is small, the ears are big, the neck is short, and the body is medium long, the back is long and straight.The shoulder and the bottom is strong.The skin and nails are gray.