Don't suppose their wool can be used for anything?

I wish I had a £ for every time somebody asks this question....(and if I had another £ for every time someone said "It  looks like a sheep..... or is 'it' a pig I'd be a millionaire by now!)
The next question is: "Do you have to shear them like sheep?"
 Well - The answers to the above are:
 "Yes" their coat does have uses
and
"No" the pigs don't have to be shorn.
Just as well because I cannot imagine who would be strong enough to toss a pig over on its back and get to work with the shears - assuming, that is, that the creature in question would be so obliging! Fortunately, nature has a more sensible method! Once a year the coat moults of its own accord. Having said that, it is not guaranteed to moult every  year. The unusually wet summer of 2012 passed with hardly any loss of wool from the entire herd of 70 or so. We never see a sodden pig, even in the heaviest of rain, which would seem to indicate that the coats are extremely water repellant.

A group of gilts in varying stages of moult

The coat is a mix of coarse, fibrous hair intertwined with short, soft 'wool'. It is difficult to knit in the traditional way, having to be mixed with something like merino to produce a 'piece' of fabric.
Nonetheless, years ago, when woolly pigs were prolific, the coats were gathered and transformed into 'vests' for the farmworkers - presumably the original 'hairshirt'. The water repellant properties may have acted much like the modern day fleece. This quality may also explain its use for fishermen's gloves in Scandinavia. Records also show that the wool was woven into the uniforms of the soldiers fighting in the American Civil War. Sadly no examples of any of these objects exist today.
What do we use it for today then?
Read on.....
If we don't shear the pigs, how do we gather their 'wool'?
We use a very simple and unscientific tool.

The wool gathering tool

 A dog brush.

We wait until the coat is starting to drop out and then brush the pig in much the same way as you would brush a dog. Except most pigs will not keep still no matter how much you tell them to do so! You can't just walk into the pen, ask them to keep still and then start brushing. As soon as you touch them, most will dash quickly away and once their suspicions are aroused there is no way they are going to come back and let you try again. So we have to be a little bit sneaky. Since we feed them mostly vegetables they get quite carried away when we change to hard feed for a meal. That's the time to be ready with the brush and grab a quick few brushstrokes before the pig realises it's not its neighbour rubbing alongside during the feeding frenzy. In this way it is sometimes possible to garner some wool from each member of the group before they all get wise and start jiggling away again. Hence, it is a slow and frustrating job. The most frustrating bit is being able to see the coat almost fall out on its own but the pig won't let you near! And no - for some reason it does not lie around on the ground when it falls out just waiting for us to pick it up. I don't know where it does go. Perhaps the birds take it to line their nests? Lucky them. Warmth & waterproofing in one go!

Packs of cleaned & dyed Mangalitza wool

Finally, when we have gathered all the wool we can - which, in view of the size of the herd, is really not such a great amount - we give it a quick clean: i.e. we put it altogether in an empty feed sack and give it a good shake!
This gets rid of much of the dry dirt and miscellaneous debris.
We then package it up and send it over to the States.
Where a lovely man (who 'found' us via the wonders of the www soon after we got our first pigs) separates wool from hair, cleans it properly (!) and dyes it into many colours using natural vegetable dyes: And then packs it into lots of little transparent bags.
"And then what happens to it? "  Well may you ask.
Thanks again to its water repellent properties, this material is highly sought after by fishermen the world over for fly-tieing!

Flies made, inter alia, from Mangalitza Pig Wool

A couple of years back Bill (he the Man in America) enlightened us, gifting us the wonderful collection shown here. I know absolutely zilch about fishing and even less about 'flies' but I can appreciate the beauty of these amazing bits of kit. Apparently the addition of the pigs' wool enables the flies to float at the optimum level for longer than would otherwise be possible......
Who would have thought that something so beautiful would result from the mix of fibres shown in picture 2 above which derive from the pigs who lounge around here in their wallows in summer..... or pure mud in wet winters.....
Not only beautiful but £ for pound, the most precious part of the pig......... 
"Everything but the squeak" as the saying goes.......

Oh! And if we could gather enough 'wool', the coarse hair which is not used in fly-tieing could be used to stuff our Sofa or mattress!