AMBA’s mission: protect & preserve the American Mulefoot Hog.
Welcome to
American Mulefoot Breeders Association, Inc.
Working to protect and preserve the
American Mulefoot Hog.
When all we can do is all we can do … instead of complaining or dropping the pig, how about lending a hand?
Chairman
Contact information
Main Office
AMBA, Inc.
PO Box 2883
Appomattox, VA 24522
(804)590-9577 (text, no mssg)
Support AMBA in its goal to protect & preserve this rare, heritage breed pig (the American Mulefoot Hog) by helping to promote this work!
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AMBA’s Pledge & Privacy Statement
AMBA announces privacy law (changes/updates), and the steps taken to protect your personal data.
Elections & Initiatives
Chairman Did It AGAIN!
It was blue, blue cold in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Front Royal, to be exact. October wasn’t holding back on Fall, and AMBA Founder and Chairman, and husband, attended the Homesteaders of America Conference, 2023.
We met Nick Freitas, Virginia Delegate, learned so much from Daniel Salatin, Polyface Farm’s Joel‘s son, Mountain Man Eustace Conway and John Lovell of WarriorPoetSociety.
We want to see some of our AMBA family at HoA 2024 - tickets will go on sale early 2024, limited to about 6000, and we hope to have a booth again and piglets from an area breeder.
This needs to be the year we make it happen!
Elections are done!
The most exciting time in a small member-lead breed organization and registry is getting folks on board: literally On The Board! Thank you to our tremendous members for running for office and those volunteering, and even those waiting in the wings to jump into the AMBA hog waller to serve!
If we don’t work together to save this breed, who will?
Ballots counted, results in!
Election time was way over due, and we’ve met every hardship (report delays & correcting inaccuracies, illness & quarantine) and the most frustrating: technology inefficiencies!
Join today! We are planning on adding a supplemental mid-term to add some new faces & voices to our Board and Membership Teams!
Renew today - don’t delay!
Chairman sends greetings!
You just never know who you’ll meet when you rub elbows with like-minded farming, homesteading and real-life folk! I met Gold Shaw Farm’s Morgan Gold at the October, 2022, Homesteader’s of America Conference in Front Royal, VA!
Would love to make this a venue for Annual Member Meetings! My farm customer Ronnie suggested in-person meetings, Breeder Member Mark Cody and a non-member reiterated it (3s a charm?), so it has to happen, am I right?
Looking at lesser cost options and alternatives, and this venue “only“ sees about 5k people each day … beautiful place, wonderful people and multi-faceted connections for all your homesteading, farmsteading needs!
We can bring pigs or pork, but I can’t do this every year alone!
From the Chairman's Desk
Membership Update and Membership Drive
2024 started off strong - but not without an issue that festered from 2022, rearing up again by early Fall, 2023.
To date, we have added new member breeders - some still sourcing breeding stock - and we are seeing new names and farms north and west of Texas! Just in Virginia alone, we have four new farms interested in breeding stock! Pigs have gone from Georgia to New York, so I am thinking good things are around the corner. 5/23/2024
We ended 2022 with 30 members, 2 supporters and four significant donations through private funds and fundraiser cups, and two donations received through the Homesteaders of America Conference event. We lost some members for various reasons in 2023, some are rebounding and trying again, gained some supporters, and through the difficulty of less than great technology, managed to find a few more experts to help us delve into the pressing issues of older American Mulefoot Hogs.
AMBA member, father and son, Pat and Andrew Schwab, presented one American Mulefoot barrow to Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington , Illinois, 2022. https://www.bloomingtonparks.org/facilities/miller-park-zoo Director Jay Tetzloff was so impressed with the little pig, his temperament and ease of handling , they requested the littermate gilt to stay , too! More information will be posted later…
Previous member, Annie Hunt, made sure to get two barrows to Blank Park Zoo’s children’s exhibit, Kids Kingdom, this year, and it just made the news! “What’s new with the Blank Park Zoo”, We Are Iowa, www.weareiowa.com, August 9, 2023.
Congratulations to Jay Tetzloff, Chief Animal Officer, of Blank Park Zoo for pulling this off again. He was instrumental in getting the Schwab’s pigs to Miller Park Zoo last year. This morning he said, “perhaps lightning can strike again like I saw with San Clemente Island Goats. They were at 250 15 years ago and now over 1000 gosts when a few zoos got involved.”
I’m ready, are you? 8/10/2023 gc
In other news:
Our membership ended 2023 with a loss of some breeders due to various reasons: retirement, employment changes, health and financial. We send our best wishes to those who have left the AMBA family, left breeding the America Mulefoot Hog, quit homesteading and “farmsteading“, or are rebounding to rebuild and start again.
The delay in scheduling our end-of-year 2023 Member Meeting was not without drama. The Board of Directors are working on the Agenda for this important meeting, working on details that just have come to light a few hours ago (May 23, 2024, 6 pm EDT). We hope that during the Welcome, we can meet our newest members, share some of the best parts of being an American Mulefoot Hog owner (or Mulie Momma), and get to know each other.
Reports will include financials, membership, herd book and herd book health, and census. There are a few projects on the table and we will be announcing those and the impact to our membership and the mulefoot hog as a whole.
The two biggest projects beyond DNA & Diversity/DNA Program include a card grading system so that we can assess stock without leaving home and a new hoof/foot study. There is a proposal in the works: the merge of the Recovery & Provisional Registration programs to capture animals with unknown lineage but exemplary visual characteristics and progeny. The proposed RP designation would highlight the positives owners know and the allow the animal to be added to the herd book provisionally, but with results of progeny and DNA testing to give full accreditation.
5/24/2024 gc
Thank you to our Breeder Members for supporting this great work on behalf of such a marvelous pig! Volunteers are kicking it into gear! Thanks to our Supporters and readers of our online social media presence and website!
>>>Parents, 4H Organizers & Sponsers —- introduce the kids in your life to the character building and rewarding world of raising a pig for the local fair or 4H competition. Students and youth members receive discount dues! Young people are the future of the American Mulefoot Hog, in stewardship for the next generations. Contact us for any helps you may need in your show stall presentations!
9/20/22
UPDATE FROM REGISTRY
Due to staffing shortages through 11/19/2022, paperwork including registrations, transfers and membership will not be processed at this time.
Continue to send completed work to ASRegistry@gmail.com, subject line : AMBA & Your Farm Name and type of work (Membership or Registrations).
Work needing approval, such as Provisional, Recovery , Bill of Sale and transactions requiring photos, must go to the main office in Appomattox, Virginia: mulefootregistry@gmail.com.
As new employees of Registry are trained and delayed work is caught up, we hope to see the turn around time improve greatly. Any corrections or omissions on your work causes delays.
11/11/22
I was again notified of a backlog of five sets of paperwork held in Kansas and hope to have this resolved this week. Please, ensure your photos are attached to the email as jpeg or pdf. App.Goo.dl does NOT work effectively for me to open or send to members only using cell phones for reviewing photos! This is a troublesome nightmare for all! 11/3/23
DNA Project Start
DNA & Diversity Project is about to graduate into an ‘on the ground’ AMBA Program!
Starting with issues that breeders have in finding purebred stock, the next issue
breeders face is in finding unrelated purebred stock.
Completion of the Census Form is always the connection between your American Mulefoot hog’s
individual blood sample DNA test and identifiable characteristics.
Once we provide the Census information to our expert advisor, his team will create our unique algorithm.
Sample cards with instructions will be mailed out, (after all Census forms received and system program set up) and must be returned to have Census data (stock characteristics) and DNA testing results analyzed.
Results will be mailed
to the breeder/owner, but more importantly, the results will also be submitted to Registry and updated in our Herd Book.
9/22/2022
A new development in the DNA collecting and verification procedure is currently being studied and will be announced after the new Board meets with our technical advisor.
To reduce the risk or possibility of DNA test results and Certificate of Registry papers being ‘sold’ with untested, unqualified pigs’ and their records, the Board has taken several steps to ensure the pig you buy matches the pig on the papers.
The Board voted in January of 2022 to require ear tag/notch photos of the animal being registered (full face photo), as well as body shot, rear end, and four feet pictures. The ear tag or notch must be recorded on their paperwork at the time of registration.
A recent development is an ear DNA sample collection and tag system that offers numbered samples that directly connect to the actual animal tested.
We have not been able to fully research or test this, but that gives us more accountability and credibility in our work.
Jan 19, 2023/gc
Membership - Breeder
$25.00
Your support will help fund our mission to preserve and promote the American Mulefoot Hog.
Other levels of Membership and Support are available - please see our Shop page! Thank you! ~AMBA
2024 Renewal Drive
$30.00
($9.00 shipping)
Add a hot/cold beverage cup, personalized with AMBA logo, to your 2024 Membership Renewal!!
Please complete and email Membership Application Form - noting 2024 Renewal w Mug to mulefootregistry@gmail.com to ensure your renewal is logged and promo cup is mailed out! Make sure to include your current mailing/shipping address!
Supplies are limited!! $5.00 of Renewal Drive funds go toward AMBA's Special Projects (currently : DNA & Diversity Project)!
We appreciate your support! ~~ gc 5/23/24
DNA & Diversity Program
$30.00
Donations are not tax-deductible, but are most appreciated.
Gifts here, or those mailed by check, go only to support the DNA & Diversity Project. Please send PayPal gift receipt copy only to mulefootregistry@gmail.com.
Gifts are processed separately from membership and registration fees for accounting purposes. We encourage check payment for donations and gifts to avoid fees assessed through PayPal & Registry . Gifts by check should be mailed directly to AMBA - DNA & Diversity Program, PO Box 2883, Appomattox, VA 24522.
There is no need to submit any forms for Gifts or Donations. We will be working on changing the “Donate Now” option from $30 per transaction to a fill-in amount. Timeframe for that update tbd and will be announced. 2/15/2023 gc