Kunekune

New Zealanders or the Maori more accurately seem to have a thing for the letter “K” when it comes to naming things. Kiwi fruit, Kiko goats & Kunekune pigs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunekune My goal is to be able to produce as much of our own food as possible, including meat.

I don’t eat much beef since I contracted an allergy to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_allergy I haven’t got it real bad most of the time but a new bite from a Lone Star tick can make the allergy stronger as I’ve figured out the hard way. I mostly just get the hives but have gone into anaphylactic shock once and been on the edge of it a couple other times. I keep an epipen in the house now just in case.

With the kunekune pigs, I’ll have to be careful when we process and eat our first one. The time I went into anaphylactic shock, it was after eating ham which had never affected me before. Normally it’s something like ribeye that sets me off however this ham was from a homegrown feeder pig, probably a heritage breed. Certainly not the same breed that the big pork producers use at any rate and so the meat was not quite “the other white meat”. I had got quite a few tick bites that summer so it’s very possible I got a Lone Start bite that strengthened that allergy.

Hopefully with the kunekune being a true pasture pigs who eats grass and weeds, they won’t be too strong. Lean meat is less apt to set me off since the allergy is for a type of fat in the meat so meat goats are another thing we’ll raise and also an annual batch of red broilers. Very lean so I should do just fine with it. I had decided on myotonic goats but couldn’t find any nearby that were bred for size and meat content so I got two Kiko does and a Boer buck.

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