Hampshire Pigs - HO Scale

Black and white pigs and one mud puddle

A Hampshire pig is easy to tell: it has a black body with a broad white belt running over the shoulders and the front legs. It is exactly this contrast that makes the breed a rewarding modeling subject, because even at a reduction of 1:87 the marking stays readable and a herd in a yard does not merge into one blot. The set holds adult animals as well as piglets, and the pieces differ in posture.

The best figure of the whole set is the pig wallowing in mud. Muddy wallows are not untidiness with pigs but a necessity, because they use them to cool off and to protect their skin from the sun and from insects. A modeler thus gets an explanation for a wet area in a yard that would otherwise have to be justified by rain. It pays to carry it through: pour a layer of glossy modeling gel into the puddle, keep the edges irregular and darken the earth around it.

The piglets belong near the adult animals, ideally in a cluster. A sow with three or four young keeping close to her is a readable picture even for a viewer who does not look into the scene from close up. The remaining adult pieces can be scattered toward a fence and a trough, where they stand together but not in line.

Pig keeping suits a farm, a fattening house by a siding and a feed transshipment point on a layout. In a scene with animals it is good to allow for a fence that has to be lower than for horses but closer-set; a pig will squeeze through a gap a horse would not even try. The animals are painted and nothing on them is assembled, so all the work lies in preparing the base they are set on.