Varkens - KuneKune
Meet Our Kune Kune Pigs
A rare New Zealand heritage breed is coming to the hills of Abruzzo — and we are set to become the only Italian breeder registered with the European Kune Kune Pig Society (EKKPS), working exclusively with pedigreed, certified bloodlines.
🐷 The Kune Kune — A Rare Heritage Breed
The Kune Kune (pronounced "cooney-cooney") is one of the world's most charming and unusual pig breeds. Its name comes from the Māori language of New Zealand and simply means "fat and round" — an honest description of this small, sociable and remarkably gentle animal. A Kune Kune is instantly recognisable: a short upturned snout, a round hairy body in a wonderful range of colours, and, on most of them, a pair of little tassels called piri piri dangling from the lower jaw — a feature found on almost no other pig breed on earth.
The breed is deeply tied to the Māori people, who kept Kune Kune around their villages for generations. By the late 1970s, however, the breed had come perilously close to vanishing — only around fifty purebred animals were thought to remain in all of New Zealand. A dedicated recovery programme, begun by wildlife-park owners Michael Willis and John Simister, gathered the last purebred pigs and rebuilt the breed from a tiny founding group of six sow lines and three boar lines. Every purebred Kune Kune alive today traces back to that handful of survivors — which is exactly why careful, documented breeding still matters so much.
Breed Characteristics
🌱 Why the Kune Kune Belongs on a Regenerative Farm
The Kune Kune is, quite simply, the grazing pig. Unlike commercial breeds that tear up pasture with relentless rooting, the Kune Kune's short, upturned snout is built for grazing grass. It can live happily on good pasture and hay with very little supplementary feed. That single trait makes it a near-perfect partner for the way we farm at L'Altalena — low-impact, rotational, and always working with the land rather than against it.
"A pig that grazes instead of digs, that fattens on grass instead of grain — the Kune Kune was made for regenerative farming."
How the Kune Kune Works With the Land
🌳 Orchard & Vineyard Grazing
Gentle grazers that keep grass and weeds in check beneath fruit trees and vines — managing the understorey without uprooting it.
🌾 Light on the Land
Minimal rooting means pasture stays intact. Their manure feeds soil microbes and earthworms rather than scarring the ground.
🐷 Easy Keepers
They thrive on pasture, hay and orchard windfalls, needing little imported grain — keeping our farm's footprint small.
🦋 A Mixed, Living Farm
Pigs grazing alongside our cows, goats, horses and poultry build the kind of biodiversity that makes a farm truly resilient.
🐾 Gentle by Nature
Kune Kune are famous for one thing above all: temperament. They are calm, curious, intelligent and genuinely fond of human company — so easygoing that they are widely kept as companion animals and are safe and rewarding for visitors of every age to meet. They settle quickly into a herd and co-exist peacefully with other livestock. For a farm like ours, where animals and people share the same hillsides, that gentleness is everything — and it makes the Kune Kune a wonderful ambassador for the kind of farming we believe in.
🏆 Our Mission — Italy's Only EKKPS-Registered Kune Kune Breeder
We do not have our Kune Kune yet — but we are preparing carefully, because we want to do this properly from day one. Our farm is set to become the only Kune Kune breeder in Italy registered with the European Kune Kune Pig Society (EKKPS): a farm that works only with purebred, pedigree-documented animals and issues a proper certificate with every piglet.
Why Registered Breeding Matters
Because the Kune Kune was rebuilt from such a small founding group, the health and future of the breed depend on careful record-keeping. A registered pig is a documented purebred — its parentage is recorded in an official herd book and its lineage can be traced back, generation by generation, to the original New Zealand foundation animals. Without that documentation, there is no real certainty that a pig is 100% Kune Kune. Registration is what protects the breed's genetic diversity and keeps the qualities we love — the grazing instinct, the calm nature, the distinctive shape — reliable for the future.
How We Are Building Our Breeding Programme
What a Registered Kune Kune Gives You
- Certainty of purebred status — an official herd-book entry, not a guess.
- Traceable lineage — a pedigree leading back to the breed's New Zealand foundation pigs.
- Predictable qualities — the temperament, grazing ability and conformation the breed is known for.
- Future breeding rights — registered animals can themselves produce registered, papered litters.
- A real contribution — every registered piglet helps conserve a rare heritage breed.
Our herd will be registered with the European Kune Kune Pig Society (EKKPS), the breed's recognised pedigree organisation in Europe — so that every animal we breed is fully documented to international standards.
🐷 Join Our Kune Kune Waiting List
Our Kune Kune are still to come — but the waiting list is open. If you are starting a regenerative farm, looking for a gentle, land-friendly heritage breed, or simply want to give a Kune Kune a beautiful home in the future, we would love to hear from you.
Every animal we breed will be pasture-raised, registered and papered, and grow up under the open Abruzzese sky.
Register your interest →