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Last updated on Friday, August 12, 2016
(FISHERS) - A rare hog that’s part of a central Indiana herd is being enlisted in a national effort to preserve the DNA of livestock species.
The Conner Prairie interactive history park in Fishers keeps an Ossabaw Island hog herd because they resemble swine present in Indiana during the 1800s. Ossabaw hogs descended from pigs the Spanish brought to the New World more than 400 years ago.
The sperm of one of Conner Prairie's Ossabaw hogs will soon be added to the National Animal Germplasm Preservation program's collection.
Purdue University animal sciences professor Terry Stewart says that program is amassing a wide range of genetic diversity among livestock species "in case of some sort of future disaster" like a disease outbreak.
That germplasm is stored at a site in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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