Mulefoot

The Mulefoot is an American hog named for its feet. Instead of the split hoof every other pig has, it has a solid one, like a mule's. The condition is called syndactylism and it turns up now and then as a single-gene mutation in other breeds. What makes the Mulefoot a breed rather than an oddity is that it is consistent, in looks and in temperament.

Where it came from is not settled. The likeliest answer is the Spanish hogs landed in the Americas from the 1500s, the same stock behind the Choctaw hog, loosely managed for three centuries before anyone standardized it around 1900.

It was bred to fatten easily and to make meat, lard and above all hams. You found them across the Corn Belt and up and down the Mississippi Valley, and often on river islands. The Livestock Conservancy's Jeannette Beranger describes the system: the hogs foraged the islands all summer, and at butchering time in the fall people went out and took what they needed.

There were two breed associations and more than 200 registering herds in the early 1900s. The current one, the American Mulefoot Breeders Association, was founded in 2014.