HOORAY for pig power! Brilliant teenage York pupil Duncan Turnbull plans to use pork profits to help fund himself through university.

Duncan Turnbull, aged 17, divides his time between his A-level studies at St Peter's School and building up Yorkshire Meats, his one-boy pig business at his parents' 19-acre smallholding at Shipton-by-Beningbrough.

Duncan, whose parents are both doctors, will have generated £10,000 in profits by the end of this year from his breeding and sale of rare pedigree Oxford Sandy and Black pigs.

That will be ploughed back into his venture but ultimately the money will be used to help fund him through higher education.

He has already applied for Oxford, St Andrews' University, Scotland, and the London School of Economics.

Now he plans to celebrate his 18th birthday next month by travelling to Turin in Italy for the Salone del Gusto, one of the world's biggest food festivals, using a UK Trade and Investment grant.

Duncan and three schoolmates he will be taking with him, will be armed at the five-day event with pork sausages and 3,000 leaflets explaining to delegates in Italian how they can adopt one of his rare breed pigs.

He said: "The Italians adopt vines and olive trees and get in return samples of the product, so why not pigs?

We'll send them bacon, sausages and pork scratchings."

This is the kind of lateral thinking which placed Duncan in the top 30 of the 1,000 who entered the national Enterprising Young Brits awards last October.

He said: "Originally, I had a little business called Duncan's ducks. I kept a flock of between 20 and 30, but once I had plucked them, dressed them up and sold them it wasn't viable, so I switched to Oxford Sandy and Black pigs, a breed which were nearly eaten out of existence during the Second World War."

He has 19 of the rare breed since five went for slaughter on Monday. They sell for £50 each, but if registered as breeders they carry a £65 price tag. Buyers are found through a website and farmers markets.

"Originally, I bought a stock of three breeders. Of them only one remains and that is Hilda, who has had about 30 piglets. When her time comes, I hope she will go with dignity - not as sausages, but as a salami!"

His mother, Dr Catherine Turnbull, worries that he spends three hours every day mucking out the pigs when he should be studying, but she knows that her concern is misplaced.

She said: "He always proves us wrong. He achieved ten A stars in his GCSEs".