Two rare breed pigs have been helping clear an overgrown area in St Margaret’s Bay – by eating their way through it.

Sows Flora and Lisa are keen eaters and once escaped to the tea room of the Bay Trust, only returning when enticed by a tray of cakes.

After three years of serving the Bay Trust with scrub clearance they are now going to be put to work again, ensuring the survival of their line in breeding programme in Norfolk.

The Bay Trust arranged for their delivery in 2013 as a natural way to transform the land into a biodiverse open-canopy woodland without the use of heavy machinery.

The pigs are from a red blood line which was almost extinct in the 1990s, along with the blonde and swallow bellied species.

“They certainly have a very healthy appetite,” Sean Giles, The Bay Trust, St Margaret's

Sean Giles, the food growing manager at the environmental education charity, said: “They’ve done a great job of clearing the area. They’re the next best thing to using wild boar.

“They certainly have a very healthy appetite!”

As well as clearing woodland, wallowing in mud and enjoying having their ears rubbed, the sows have helped educate school children.

Pupils have been learning to inspect the animals to ensure they are healthy, as part of their GCSE studies.

Mr Giles said: “The sows are very placid and friendly and we will all miss their funny ways.”

In the 90s, there were fewer than 150 sows worldwide but thanks to the work of dedicated breeders, the Mangalitza has a rosier future.

Breeder William Scott said: “I trawled through all the records of the British Pig Association to find the purest red boars and sows and The Bay Trust’s sows were close to the best in the country.

“They’ve been cross-bred once in their great-grandparents’ lineage so by putting them across a red boar that’s genetically the furthest away from them, the piglets will be almost pure bred within three to four generations.”

Mr Scott is a former Mangalitza Breed Representative for the British Pig Association, and plans to breed Flora and Lisa with a red boar at his Frogs Abbey Farm in Welney.

He said: “We want to build up to eight or nine sows and four or five boars. Then we can use the piglets for a mixture of produce and breeding.

“We’re working with farmers in Germany, Austria and Hungary to bring more red pigs back to the UK but ultimately we will get to the point where we don’t need to bring any more in.”

For more information visit baytrust.org.uk