If Marksville is the spiritual center of Avoyelles parish and Bunkie its agricultural hub, the quintessentially Cajun town of Mansura just might be where you’ll find Avoyelles’ culinary heart. The small town has had a big reputation for hospitality since 1960, when ten thousand people showed up to celebrate Mansura’s centennial with a traditional Cajun cochon de lait, or suckling pig roasted over an open fire. So good was the grub that the occasion became a tradition, and Mansura’s Cochon de Lait Festival evolved into an annual affair featuring a weekend of swine-tastic activities, tens of thousands of attendees, and led to the town being designated the official “Cochon de Lait Capital of the World” by the Louisiana legislature. Ever since, (there was a brief hiatus during the ‘70s and ‘80s) the festival has celebrated the old-world roots and inimitable French-Acadian flavor of Avoyelles parish with good music, great food, and family-friendly good times.
Held the second full weekend each May, the Cochon de Lait Festival presents hog-forward events that give this pork-fuelled fiesta an allure all its own, and keep barbecue lovers coming back year after year. There’s a hog-calling contest, a boudin-eating contest, a highly competitive beer-drinking competition, a cracklin’ cook off, and the hotly anticipated “greasy pig contest” where participants do their darndest to catch and sack a pig that has been dipped in grease. The prize: the winner gets to take the pig home!
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Children try to catch a slippery swine during the "greasy pig contest."
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Live music keeps the pork party going all weekend.
But all those pork-centric celebrations are just appetizers for the main event: the cochon de lait itself, in which multiple pigs weighing between 150 and 200 pounds are simultaneously slow-cooked over open flames. According to organizers, the festival has featured as many as thirty-eight swine roasting at one time, guaranteeing enough juicy, succulent cochon de lait to last a lifetime (or until next year’s festival, at least.)
There will also be a jamming lineup of live music all weekend, festival queens, food and craft vendors, and a 5K run to whet attendees appetites for more. So what are you waiting for? Mansura might be small, but it can throw a Cajun party worth pigging out for. The 2026 Cochon de Lait Festival will be held on Mother’s Day weekend—May 8—10.
Learn more at cochondelaitfestival.com.
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