American Guinea Hogs
Breed Description
American Guinea Hogs are an excellent choice for a small backyard homestead. Smaller bodied and friendly, these hogs are easy to handle on a daily basis (even for children) and are a much more manageable size for home butchering. These pigs are famous for sustainably producing succulent pork and high quality lard. American Guinea Hogs are wonderful mothers who traditionally keep good body condition on hay, pasture, garden and kitchen waste, and anything else they can forage, with very little grain supplementation. We LOVE that nothing ever goes to waste on our farm because our pigs eat everything with happy piggy gratitude.
Slow Growth
American Guinea Hogs are slow growing, taking 12-18 months to finish rather than the typical 6-8 months for commercial hogs. Why would anyone choose a breed of pig that takes 2-3x as long? Low-input and high-quality is the answer. Instead of feeding hundreds of pounds of grain to our hogs in order to get them to fatten in time for a late fall slaughter, our Guinea Hogs can grow to market weight with a very small amount of grain to supplement the hay, greens and forage that make up their regular diet. In fact, Guinea Hogs are so efficient at feed conversion that it is extremely easy to over-fatten them. This type of diet leads to a more sustainable way of raising hogs with less dependence on outside supplementation and in return, more nutritious and tasty pork.
Our Management
We keep our pigs in a semi-permanent enclosure where they have access to hay and as much garden produce, kitchen scraps, and weeds as we can get to them. We also use them to clear the land as needed. They are fed an organic whole grain mix in small amounts as a supplement. Our long term goal is to grow “pig gardens” that the pigs can self-harvest as we rotate their paddocks.
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We are proud members of the American Guinea Hog Association. For more information on these pigs, enjoy the AGHA and Livestock Conservancy descriptions.
