Dorset farmers horrified after pig illegally butchered in field

Warning: Graphic images below

A Dorset farmer has spoken of his horror at finding the remains of one of his free-range pigs that had been illegally slaughtered and butchered in a field overnight.

James Hull made the gruesome discovery on Sunday morning (20 November) after realising a group of his Tamworth pigs had broken through their electric fence.

See also: Northamptonshire sheep slaughter: The story behind the killing spree

The shocked farmer believes the criminals shot the pig in the field, spooking the rest of the group which stampeded through the fence.

“I was mending the fence and thinking about what could have happened when I saw something in the corner of my eye – a pig’s heart lying on the floor,” Mr Hull told Farmers Weekly.

“Then I saw a couple of the pig’s feet. A bit further away was the rest of its intestines and its skin.”

© James Hull

Mr Hull found a pool of blood in the paddock where he believes the pig was shot. “They had somehow managed to carry it out to the hedge and butchered it there. It was a fit pig, it would have been about 100kg.”

© James Hull

‘Professional job’

The farmer said whoever had committed the sickening act seemed to “disappear into thin air”, and it looked like a professional job.

“We had 22 pigs stolen in the summer. In a way, that was less shocking than this. If they are doing one at a time, are they going to come back?” he said.

“To do all that you had to know what you were doing. This group was my next to pick from, so they were all pretty well finished. They were fit to go.”

Financial loss

Mr Hull farms with his wife, Charlotte, near Sherborne and on the border with Somerset. The couple have worked hard to establish their 500-head herd of free-range Tamworth pigs. They farm about 20ha on a mixture of rented and owned land.

The meat is sold in the farm shop and as homemade produce in their café, as well as to the Newt, a country estate in Somerset that has a hotel and restaurant.

“We produce very high-end, slow-growing Tamworth pork, so pounds per kilo is massively more, but we have far fewer piglets and it takes a lot longer to grow them.”

The Tamworth cross Saddleback pig was worth £600-£700. Mr Hull has reported the incident to Avon and Somerset Police.