There is no such thing as "the" Philippine native pig
DOST-PCAARRD documents six named native pig populations, and they are not variations on one animal. A Yookah from Kalinga reaches 15 kg at 180 days. A Q-Black from Quezon reaches 36.86 kg at the same age with a litter half again as large. If you are buying a native pig to raise, that difference is the whole decision.
In short
- Six named strains, characterised by DOST-PCAARRD: Q-Black, Benguet, ISUbela, Markaduke, Yookah, Sinirangan.
- Only 3 of the six have a published 180-day weight. Only 4 have a published litter size. 2 have neither, and one of those — Sinirangan — has no published performance data at all.
- Q-Black is the best measured. 0.84 ± 0.05 kg at birth, 6.42 ± 1.72 born per litter, 4.79 kg weaned at 45 days, 36.86 ± 5.68 kg at 180 days for males.
- ISUbela weans at 34 days, more than a week earlier than the others, which is the most economically interesting figure on this page if it holds outside the research herd.
- Benguet and Kalinga are conservation priorities (Banayo et al., 2023), and Benguet has no published growth data of any kind.
Why every other page says "black, small, hardy"
Because that is what all six have in common, and it is where most writing about native pigs stops. Plain black coat, smooth skin, straight hair: five of the six are described in almost identical words, and only Yookah has a marking to tell it apart by eye. So a page that describes appearance has genuinely said everything appearance can say, and then usually keeps going with growth rates and litter sizes that were never measured on the animal being described.
The figures below are quoted from the Philippine Animal Breeds Information System, which is DOST-PCAARRD's own. Where it prints a standard deviation, it is kept. "6.42 ± 1.72 piglets" is a different claim from "6 piglets", and dropping the spread is how a research average becomes somebody's target.
The six, side by side
| Strain | Origin | Litter | 180 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q-Black (Quezon Black) | Quezon | 6.42 ± 1.72 | 36.86 ± 5.68 kg (males), 31.24 ± 1.81 kg (females) |
| Benguet native pig | Benguet | not published | not published |
| ISUbela | Isabela | 7 piglets per litter | not published |
| Markaduke | Marinduque | 7 piglets per litter | 30–40 kg |
| Yookah | Kalinga | 4 piglets | 15 kg |
| Sinirangan | Eastern Samar | not published | not published |
Source: DOST-PCAARRD Philippine Animal Breeds Information System, native pigs section, read 15 August 2026. "Not published" means exactly that. It is not an estimate withheld, it is a measurement nobody has published.
Q-Black (Quezon Black)
Bondoc Peninsula, Quezon — San Francisco, Mulanay and San Andres
- Birth weight
- 0.84 ± 0.05 kg
- Litter size
- 6.42 ± 1.72
- Weaning
- 4.79 ± 0.79 kg at 45.21 ± 1.95 days
- 180 days
- 36.86 ± 5.68 kg (males), 31.24 ± 1.81 kg (females)
The best-documented of the six. The herd traces to three junior boars and twelve gilts collected in 2014 from three Quezon municipalities, and it was renamed from "Bondoc Peninsula" under the project that characterised it. If you want a native strain whose numbers somebody actually measured, this is the one.
Coat: Plain black, smooth skin, straight backline, semi-lop ear. No published data for: feed conversion under village conditions, mortality to weaning, where a buyer outside Quezon sources registered stock.
Benguet native pig
Benguet, Cordillera
- Birth weight
- 0.77 kg
- Litter size
- not published
- Weaning
- not published
- 180 days
- not published
The strain with the deepest cultural claim and the thinnest published performance data. Banayo et al. (2023) name Benguet a national conservation priority on biocultural grounds. The pig is inseparable from Cordillera ritual practice, and losing the population loses the knowledge with it. What that paper does not give you is a growth curve.
Coat: Plain black, straight hair, smooth skin. No published data for: litter size, weaning age and weight, 180-day weight, growth rate of any kind.
ISUbela
Isabela
- Birth weight
- 0.77 kg
- Litter size
- 7 piglets per litter
- Weaning
- 3.00 kg as early as 34 days
- 180 days
- not published
Weans earlier than the others by more than a week. If that holds outside the research herd it is the single most economically interesting thing about any of these strains. A sow that weans at 34 days instead of 45 gives you a shorter cycle and more litters a year.
Coat: Plain black, straight hair, smooth skin. No published data for: 180-day weight, mature size, whether the early weaning holds under village management.
Markaduke
Marinduque
- Birth weight
- not published
- Litter size
- 7 piglets per litter
- Weaning
- 42 to 45 days
- 180 days
- 30–40 kg
Reaches roughly the same 180-day weight as Q-Black and carries a slightly larger published litter. Marinduque is an island population, which is part of why it is genetically distinct and part of why sourcing it anywhere else is hard.
Coat: Plain black, straight hair, smooth skin. No published data for: birth weight, weaning weight, off-island availability.
Yookah
Kalinga, Cordillera
- Birth weight
- not published
- Litter size
- 4 piglets
- Weaning
- not published
- 180 days
- 15 kg
Half the 180-day weight of Q-Black and Markaduke, and a litter of four against their six or seven. Read that as a warning before you read it as a flaw. Kalinga pigs show a high effective population size that Banayo et al. attribute to introgression of wild pig alleles, and an animal shaped by that is not competing on growth rate.
Coat: Black with white socks — the only one of the six with a marking. No published data for: birth weight, weaning age and weight, mature size.
Sinirangan
Eastern Samar
- Birth weight
- not published
- Litter size
- not published
- Weaning
- not published
- 180 days
- not published
Recognised as a distinct genetic group and, as of August 2026, published with a coat description and nothing else. That is worth saying out loud rather than filling in: a page that gave you a Sinirangan growth figure would be giving you a number nobody has measured.
Coat: Plain black, straight hair, smooth skin. No published data for: birth weight, litter size, weaning, 180-day weight, everything except what it looks like.
What the genetics say, and why two of these are conservation priorities
Banayo et al., writing in Ecology and Evolution in October 2023, ran twenty ISAG-FAO microsatellite markers across seven native populations and named five as conservation priorities. Two of those findings change how you should read the table above.
Benguet is called a national concern on biocultural grounds. The pig is inseparable from Cordillera ritual practice, so losing the population loses the knowledge attached to it. That is an argument for keeping the animal that has nothing to do with how fast it grows, which is just as well, because nobody has published how fast it grows.
Kalinga showed an unusually high effective population size, which the authors attribute to introgression of wild pig alleles, which is interbreeding with wild Sus. Yookah's 15 kg at 180 days reads differently once you know that. It is not an underperforming farm pig. It is an animal under different selection.
Earlier mitochondrial work places the Philippine native pig in three ancestral lineages: East Asian, Southeast Asian, and a distinct Cordillera clade. Which is a longer way of saying that treating these six as one breed is not a simplification. It is wrong.
Buying one, honestly
Here is the part most pages skip. There is no national registry of accredited native pig multipliers you can order from. The characterisation herds sit with government institutions and state universities in each strain's home region, and what a backyard raiser is usually sold as "native" in a wet market is an unrecorded local black pig that may or may not belong to any of these populations. That is not a scam, it is what the supply chain is, but it does mean the figures above describe research herds and not necessarily the animal in front of you.
Start with your municipal or provincial agriculture office, and with the state university nearest the strain's origin. Ask what the herd's records show rather than what the breed is supposed to do. And weigh the animal. The standard tape formulas were fitted on Western breeds and overestimate a native pig by fifteen to twenty per cent, which is why our weight estimator refuses to run them on one and uses a Philippine regression instead.
Sa Bisaya
Dili tanan itom nga baboy parehas. Unom ka klase ang gisulat sa DOST-PCAARRD, ug lahi kaayo sila. Ang Q-Black gikan sa Quezon mokabat og mga 37 ka kilo sa 180 ka adlaw. Ang Yookah gikan sa Kalinga, 15 ka kilo ra sa parehas nga edad.
Kung mopalit ka og native nga baboy para tubuon, pangutan-a asa gikan. Ug ayaw pagsalig sa sukod nga pormula para sa Landrace. Sobra ra kaayo ang mogawas, mga 15 ngadto sa 20 porsiyento.
Questions people actually ask
How many Philippine native pig breeds are there?
DOST-PCAARRD documents six named genetic groups: Q-Black (Quezon), Benguet, ISUbela (Isabela), Markaduke (Marinduque), Yookah (Kalinga) and Sinirangan (Eastern Samar). They are not six breeds in the sense that Landrace and Duroc are breeds. They are regional populations that a national characterisation programme has separated and measured to different depths.
Which native pig strain grows the fastest?
Of the strains with a published 180-day weight, Q-Black is the heaviest, at 36.86 ± 5.68 kg for males and 31.24 ± 1.81 kg for females, with Markaduke at a comparable 30 to 40 kg. Yookah is published at 15 kg at the same age. Three of the six have no published 180-day weight at all, so "fastest" can only honestly be said about the three that do.
How big is a native pig litter?
Where it is published: Q-Black 6.42 ± 1.72 piglets, ISUbela and Markaduke 7, Yookah 4. Benguet and Sinirangan have no published litter size. Every one of those is below what a commercial Landrace cross gives you, which is the trade native pigs make — smaller litters and slower growth against hardiness, low input cost and a lechon premium.
Are native pigs worth raising in the Philippines?
For lechon de leche and for a market that pays for the eating quality, yes — native pork regularly fetches ₱250 to ₱300 a kilo liveweight against ₱170 to ₱200 for commercial. For volume fattening, no. A strain that reaches 30 to 40 kg at 180 days is not competing with a hybrid that reaches 90 kg in 150.
Where can I buy registered native pig breeding stock?
This is the honest weak point. The characterisation herds sit with government institutions and state universities in each strain's home region, and there is no national registry of accredited multipliers a backyard raiser can order from. Start with your provincial or municipal agriculture office and with the state university nearest the strain's origin.
Related: the native pig breed page for raising and market context, the weight estimator for the Philippine native formula, and the price archive for what pork is fetching.