The American Yorkshire is an American

breed A breed is a specific group of domestic animals having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species. In literature, there exist several slig ...

of large

domestic pig The pig (''Sus domesticus''), often called swine, hog, or domestic pig when distinguishing from other members of the genus '' Sus'', is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is variously considered a subspecies of ''Sus s ...

. It is the most numerous pig breed in the United States. It derives from pigs of the British

Large White ''Pieris brassicae'', the large white, also called cabbage butterfly, cabbage white, cabbage moth (erroneously), or in India the large cabbage white, is a butterfly in the family Pieridae. It is a close relative of the small white, ''Pieris ra ...

or Yorkshire breed imported from the United Kingdom or from Canada at various times from about 1830 to the mid-twentieth century.

History

The Yorkshire was the traditional pig of the county of the same name in northern England. Some pigs were imported under this name to the United States in about 1830. They were large and white, and – untypically – had large lop-ears; some of them at least may in fact have been from Lincolnshire rather than Yorkshire. Within a short time these were seen in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

and, under a variety of names, in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. A stock company with the name American Yorkshire Club was started in

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center o ...

, in 1893, and a herd-book was begun. The first volume of this, published in 1901, listed 1264 animals; of these, approximately 40% were of the Small Yorkshire breed of small pig. The first boar registered in the new herd-book had been imported from Canada, purchased from the Ontario Agricultural College; Canada was the source of most Yorkshire imports at this time. The third edition of the herd-book in 1906 held animals registered in thirty-nine different states; the fifth edition of 1915 listed over 5300 pigs, of which only a handful were of the Small Yorkshire or Middle Yorkshire breeds.

Notes

References

Pig breeds originating in the United States {{Pig-stub