All you ever wanted to know about pig-keeping is
available on a weekend course,
says Angus Watson.

Ian and Maggie Todd's Smallicombe Farm b&b is a pig fancier's dream. Every surface in the East Devon farmhouse is hogged by piggy figurines. Outside are 60 rare-breed pigs, which you can meet either on Piggy Weekends - "When people come to ooh and aah," says lan - or during classes for prospective pig-keeping smallholders. I signed up for a class.

1t begins well, with a very smart room for me to stay in and a fry-up featuring magnificent bacon from Smallicombe's own pigs. lan arrives and tries to be nonchalant about pigs, but his swine fever is soon apparent. "We're going to New Zealand shortly' he says unhappily.

"Maggie has been asked to judge a pig show and she's persuaded me to leave the pigs for the first time. With holidays away from their children, people wonder what they are doing the whole time, I shall be the same with the pigs."

lan, now retired from his job as a solicitor in Exeter, came to pigs late in life. The Todds and their three children moved to the eight-acre Smallicombe Farm 20 years ago and they developed the b&b business. Then, in the reverse of the usual procedure, they diversified into farming. They now have 13 cattle, 50 rare-breed sheep and three types of rare-breed pigs: Middle Whites, Berkshires and British Lops.

The course begins in a barn festooned with pig-show rosettes, at a table covered in pig books and equipment. "I talk about how to choose your breed," explains lan, "and whether you're going to have weaners or try breeding. Then I look at housing, health, legal requirements, feeding, books to buy, piggie terms and so on."

There is a big difference, lan explains, between rearing weaners and breeding. "If you're keeping a couple of weaners for the freezer, you'd buy them about two months old and they'd move on to the freezer three months later. You'd need a pig ark [from about £200] with a little area for exercise. For breeding pigs, you need paddocks and buildings." What's more, weaners are easy to handle. They only need to be fed eveiy day and mucked out. Adult pigs are colossal, immensely powerful, and require more hands-on attention.

Outside the barn, our tour covers all porcine life stages and accommodation types. Although the Todds sell their pigs as breeders, weaners and for meat, you'd need to keep more than 60 before you could turn a profit. lan explains: "You're keeping rare-breed pigs for quality meat, the pleasure of keeping them and to keep the breed going, not to make money."

First we visit Graham and Big Ears, a couple of Middle Whites living in a straw-filled sty in a small concrete yard. There's nothing It! "middle" about them — they are the size of cows with their legs chopped off - and they have squashed faces like giant pink bats. lan tells me that you should choose your pig based on what you would like to see in the morning and last thing at night. I raise an eyebrow. "When you go out to feed them," he elucidates.

Next are four stables, each with variously aged piglets. A gang of 10-week~old Berkshires are the size of corgis, shiny and dark, with white feet, noses and tails. They squeal and charge the stable door happily. Mixed in with a medley of young Middle Whites are some British Lops, with large ears that flop over their eyes so they have trouble seeing, perhaps explaining why they are the rarest pigs in the UK, In the next two stables are tiny suckling Berkshires, one set just four days old, teeming around leviathan mothers.

Out in the field, in quarter-acre enclosures, are two happy couples - Berkshires and British Lops. Each enclosure contains a pig ark, a humpy shelter made from corrugated metal. The boars live here all year; the sows visit for a few weeks.

Most of the people who attend the course are moving to the country and want to keep pigs. If you're in this position, then the course is for you. But anyone who simply loves pigs would adore the Piggy Weekend.

H En-suite b&b at Smallicombe Farm in East Devon costs from £28 per person and the pig-breeding course costs £95 for a couple (01404 831310; www.smallicombe.com). British Pig Association: 01223 845100; www.britishpigs.org.uk.