Lucies Farm · Worcestershire

Swimming pigs

Pigs are strong swimmers, which surprises almost everybody. These were photographed between 2005 and 2009, in a heated pool in the English Midlands.

A woman swimming alongside a ginger Tamworth pig in a bright blue pool
A Tamworth, and company.

Lucies Farm raised Tamworth and Berkshire pigs, wild boar, Highland and Aberdeen Angus cattle, chickens and ducks. The Berkshires were reared in the Japanese manner and sold as Kurobuta. None of that is why anyone rang up.

People rang up about the swimming. A pig in a swimming pool is a difficult thing to look away from — snout above the surface, ears flat, trotters going underneath — and once a television producer has seen one photograph of it, the rest of the farm becomes a footnote.

In the water

A Berkshire, July 2006.

A black and white pig swimming, snout above the water A pig swimming towards the camera, ears back A pig swimming in turquoise water A pig swimming away from the camera A pig swimming alongside a man A pig at the surface, snout raised A pig swimming, trotters visible below the surface A pig swimming, close to the camera

The tank

The problem with photographing a swimming pig is the waterline. From the poolside you get a snout. From underwater you get trotters. The picture everyone actually wants has both, and that means holding a camera exactly at the surface — which normally means diving gear.

A photographer gave us the solution: a watertight perspex box, open at the top, weighted for buoyancy. You kneel down inside it, dry, with the glass at eye level, and two men in wetsuits move you around the pool. Ours were expert at it.

Two men in a swimming pool steadying a black-framed perspex tank with a photographer kneeling inside it
The tank in use, 19 September 2006. The photographer kneels inside; the two men keep it level.
The perspex tank being carried into the pool
Getting it into the water was the hard part.
A dog swimming, photographed at the waterline: head above, legs paddling below
What it was for.
A dog swimming towards the camera at the waterline
Above and below, in one frame, without a single air tank.

On film

The pigs and the dogs were filmed a good many times — by the BBC, by national breakfast television, and by others. This is an hour of it, edited at the farm.

Dogs and pigs: an hour of broadcast coverage, cut at Lucies Farm.

Twenty minutes of press coverage — swimming pigs, Kurobuta pork, and a luxury dog hotel.

About the name. Aquarena Springs, at San Marcos in Texas, ran an underwater theatre whose most celebrated performer was Ralph, a diving pig. The domain is a small homage. Craig — correct this line if I have the detail wrong.

Elsewhere

The farm is gone, and so is the dog hotel it grew into. The record is not.