American Guinea Hog questions for Dennis60

[big brown horse]

The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) classifies Guinea Hogs as critical on the Conservation Priority List.

The American Guinea Hog Association was formed in 2005 to preserve this rare breed for future generations of farmers and ranchers wanting a smaller pig to produce pork for the family on farms and homesteads.

Seems like these little hogs would fit in well in a self-sufficient-small-backyarded-lifestyle.

Dennis, would you mind telling us all about them? Many of us are either pig owners (even if we didn't really want to be pig owners ) or are thinking about getting pigs/hogs to raise for meat.

ETA: http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/guinea.html

 

[bibliophile birds]

i've been looking into Guinea hogs and they seem like a great choice for a SS setup. would love to hear more!

 

[dennis60]

Thanks for the interest in these rare hogs. We do live on a small farm....and they are very managable and they are only about 150-200 lbs full grown. They are almost like pets. We let them free reign for a couple years and they always would come when called. Then the herd grew to about 10 and a couple of them wandered up on to the highway. We had a couple people drive down to tell us they were up on or near the highway so we now keep them pinned. We do have to use hog panels and t posts on the corners and tie the posts to the pen. One of the biggest girls can lift a 16' panel and still gets out occasionally , so we put her inside the hog house.
We butchered 3 of them, and have had 3 butchered at a meat processing place. They are very tasty, not too fat, and plenty of flavor.... I really like raising them. We have eight 6 month olds. If you are interested in aquiring them private message me, and we will begin negotiations. I don't now how to post pictures here, so if you private message me i can send you pictures.

Dennis

 

[big brown horse]

I am interested in the "heritage" breeds b/c I hear that the modern meat hog isn't as tasty as hogs of days gone by.

Thanks for sharing!

What else do you feed them?

 

[dennis60]

We do raise the heritage breed. The last litter was a little confused though. They were free ranging and we do not know who got the girls pregnant! That won't happen again, as i said we are pinning them now.
We feed them a mixture twice a day. Some corn, oats, barley, bran, diatamatious (sp?) earth ( good for keeping any worms out ), and some kelp once a day. They LOVE pumpkins so we get all the pumpkins in the nearby town after Haloween when they put them on the curb. Last year we had a huge crop of free will pumkins just from the hogs poop. Ha! The overflow of eggs from our 23 hens we hard boil and give them maybe once a week. They will eat anything i think. They also love any left over beer......

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

Hmmmm....American Guinea Hog? I've not heard about this breed!

Must do more investigations on this one....

 

[Wildsky]

As long as they don't scream like my dern guinea fowl we'll all be good!

 

[Occamstazer]

As long as they don't scream like my dern guinea fowl we'll all be good!

x100

We had to invite some of the guinea fowl to supper for that very reason.