Farming rare pigs for profit and protection

Shelly Mora has qualifications in business and administration studies, once managed an internet cafe in Taupo and had a few supervising roles in retail, but now she’s doing something completely different – breeding rare Large Black Pigs and loving it.


Large Black pigs make excellent mothers.

Long ears
The pigs live up to their name. They are indeed large with long, deep bodies. The couple’s sire boar is more than 1.5 metres long and weighs more than 200kg.

Their adult sows weight more than 150kg. Apart from their colour, the most distinctive feature of a Large Black is the large ears which reach to the tips of their snouts, covering their eyes.

Shelly and Hadley graze their current herd of 25 pigs plus piglets on a five hectare block of lease land near Temple View, Hamilton. However, the couple are currently developing their own 12.8ha property near Huntly as their new farm.

“We would like to increase the pig numbers to 60 sows in the short to medium term and eventually become a free range chicken farm too.”

While Shelly has learned farming skills from Hadley, who manages a calf rearing unit, she’s called on her business training to help plan the growth of the business they call ‘Zenfirma Farm’.

“With the business in its infancy I’ve engaged our accountant for advice with our financial planning.”

Rural Women
Joining Rural Women NZ and entering the Enterprising Rural Women Awards 2014 is also helping grow her knowledge of the business of farming.

“Rural Women is a wonderful organisation with so much support and so much knowledge among the members. I’m really grateful for the journey of my application so far and looking forward to the future with this wonderful organisation.”

Shelly and Hadley have set themselves high goals and this is reflected in their choice of business name.

“The meaning is ‘Zen’ coming from ‘Zenith’ being the highest point, top of the world and ‘firma’ means ‘I believe firmly in what I am doing’. Put it together, you have top quality pigs coming from the best, free range farm.”

Venturing into farming has not only meant learning to work with and manage pigs for South African born Shelly, but also how to drive ‘Li’l Lisa’, Hadley’s purple Massey Ferguson tractor.

“I love driving the tractor. It’s great for transporting feed and fencing gear,” says Shelly, who came to New Zealand with her family at age 13.


Hadley Mora’s purple Massey Ferguson is now Shelly Mora’s trusty transport for pig food and fencing.

Electric fences
The pigs are kept in small paddocks, separated by low electric fences which makes moving them to fresh pasture easy.

That pasture includes chicory and clover and this year a crop of oats was grown as an experiment. “It has been highly successful and we got one re-growth of oats to graze again and the pigs love it, so the next crop will be peas and oats.

“Pigs only root up the ground because of a diet deficiency. So we use it as a strong indicator to balance the diet when we see rooting.”

The pigs are fed on wheat bran, palm kernel, soy, crushed maize and oats, dried grape, molasses and other dry feed. Carrots and milk are also fed when available.

“I don’t feed ‘commercial scraps’ to the pigs due to the lack of nutrition and MPI restrictions.”

Lactating sows are fed 13kg minimum of dry food a day, while the piglets have a ‘creep feeder’ which is a little box Hadley built, to shelter food from weather.

“The sow cannot get to it due to a hotwire that piglets can go under. This box is filled with up to 30kg of high protein feed for the piglets to adlib from during the day.”



Breeding herd
Zenfirma Farm began about five years ago and initially Shelly and Hadley travelled the North Island buying Large Black pigs to get as many bloodlines as possible for their breeding herd.

“It is believed our free-range herd of pure bred Large Black pigs is possibly the largest herd in New Zealand of this breed, but research of this is still going on.

“I don’t buy or sell pigs through the local sale yards. It’s all done through word of mouth and we have had adverts on TradeMe a few times in the last six months.”

The pigs are visible from the roadside and the signs on the fence with contacts numbers are a regular source of inquiry too.

Many clients are dairy farmers, who raise the pigs for their meat. Shelly and Hadley don’t sell meat from their own animals, but establishing a free range pork processing facility on their new farm is among their long-term plans.

Shelly is committed to seeing the Large Black breed recover, and the protection of other threated domestic animals. For that reason she’d like to join the board of the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of New Zealand.

“One of my goals is to demonstrate to others how a large-scale outdoors pig herds can be run in a profitable manner.”


Long ears almost covering their eyes are a distinctive feature of Large Black pigs.


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