American Guinea Hogs

Forest Restoration. Ethical Meat Consumption. Compost. A Personality to Match.
The Perfect Homestead Hog

A Heart's Pasture Story
Circa 2020: Before We Got Hogs

Forest restoration. Ethical meat consumption. Compost. Those were our needs. The next farm plateau to reach, and a lofty one at that. An easy way to solve all three? Hogs. A breed that meets the needs of all three of those goals, but also matches our farm philosophy and our symbiotic relationship with our animals? Enter American Guinea Hogs.

Like all farm endeavors, it seems, once we realized our needs, we jumped in without a second thought. First task on the agenda? Research which breed of hogs would be a good fit. So we stumbled down the rabbit hole of hog ideologies as we did our reading on hog breeds. Through this process, one breed in particular stayed toward the top of our list: The American Guinea Hog. 

The information that we learned about AGHs was unequivocally positive: 

Are American guinea hogs easy to care for on the farm?
They reach a manageable weight, full grown, at around 200 pounds. Wild foraging, they are great on the pocketbook and more suitable to a forest that has lots of tree brush, nuts and seeds, plant life, and root tubers. That's why they are often referred to as piney woods hogs, we would come to realize.

What about their personalities? We love our animals here at Heart's Pasture Farm, and bonding with them is important to us, even if one day they do become our respective dinner. It is important that we give them what they need to subsists, but that we also meet their social needs and give them a life well-lived.
AGHs have great personalities! They are docile, and have the ability to form a unique attachment to their farmers, food motivated as it may be. Boars are very trainable and will take pets and rubs just as much as a gilt, sow, or barrow. Sows, in particular, have exceptional personalities in regards to rearing piglets. They are generally more gentle and rarely, for example, accidentally crush newborn piglets by rolling over on them (in comparison of more conventional hog breeds). Typically great mothers, they care for their young and teach them the "ways of the hog". 

Being human omnivores who love the taste and nourishment of ethically raised and pastured meat, can they feed our farm family (we work hard and eat A LOT)?
Reaching a healthy weight of about 200 pounds full grown, a few hogs each year may be enough to provide a small family their need for pork. How many hogs it takes to feed a family is different for everyone. In addition to prime cuts of meat, American guinea hogs are known to have a large amount of lard, which can be used to make pie crusts, fry eggs in the cast-iron skillet, and make candles or soaps, to mention just a few uses. Their size makes them manageable for socially responsible butchering right on the farm. But lastly, the taste . . . when raised responsibly, heritage breeds have an "old timey" flavor to them, unlike anything a person would buy at the grocery store. American guinea hogs, with all of their wonderful flavors, give conventionally farmed and bred breeds a bad name (and rightfully so).

But would these hogs be a good fit for our northern Michigan setting? Particularly, how would they fair in the winter?
These hogs are incredibly resilient in all settings. Left to forage on their own, they will make do. During our research, we read numerous stories from many decades ago about how these hogs were released on woodland pasture, forgotten, and then found again, healthy as ever, and ready to butcher. Perhaps that is a bit drastic of a way to raise a farm animal, but it definitely is a testament to their genetics, having retained a lot of traits of hardiness from their wild boar relatives. The same could not be said about conventional hog breeds, which have had these traits bred out of them in order to emphasize other parts of their genetic makeup. Thus, if they were given adequate enough of a shelter, they definitely could thrive in our Michigan climate. 

I need something that HEATS UP our compost pile. Every farm, especially one with goats, has a lot of hay waste. Do they fit the bill?
Taken from the book Small Scale Pig Raising, hog manure is as "Good as it stinks". Enough said. 

American guinea hogs, once thought to be almost extinct, epitomize the old fashioned, "old timey" homestead hog. Their genetic makeup as a incredibly productive and an easy to raise landrace breed deserves attention from all small homesteads. It is by working with this breed of hog that families can become more self-reliant and less dependent on meat that is consumed from the grocery store, flown or driven from thousands of miles away, raised in terrible living quarters, and, we would learn through our reading, perhaps most importantly, not allowed to express its full "pig-ness". 

That was the year we started raising American guinea hogs. 

Circa 2023: After we got hogs

A few years have passed since we wrote our story above, and we don't know where we would be in this whole farming endeavor without our American Guinea Hogs. What they offer to small family farms and homesteaders is health and independence. The ways in which they do it is subtle and often overlooked, since they have such easy-going personalities they do not require a lot of attentive care, so long as their needs are being met. 

One of the reasons that we wanted to get American Guinea Hogs was for forest restoration. Our 15 acre woods is mixed hardwood, with a small percentage of softwood (white pine). Our forest floor is filled predominantly with bracken fern. The rhizomes are all thickly connected to one another under ground, and each year as summer approaches, green fern heads shade the understory below. Some plant species (wintergreen) do well growing under this type of fern, but most others do not. As a result, a rich forest floor with a nicely shaded tree canopy does not have a chance to grow as it competes for space. 

Our hogs really thrive in our mixed forest setting, especially with the fern. It turns out that they eat every part of the plant, including the tubers. Once the tubers are eaten up, the fern does not come back in the same place the next year. Without our hogs, there would not be a way to transform our forest into a living, nutrient rich, woodland pasture.

Hog panels allow our hogs to work the forest floor and find food to eat.

Here is an example of a hog panel separating the work of our hogs.

Circa The future: Our Forest Garden

We grew a cover crop where our hogs had been. Before hogs, the forest floor was not workable.

Each spring, summer, and fall our American Guinea Hogs go to work in our woods. Do they know what they are building? Probably not, but they do the work nature intended them to do anyway. For that, we are thankful. The future of our 15 acre woods is highly reliant on our hogs. We can't do it without them. It may take many more years to get there, but the forest that we envision has a rich green understory filled with perennial plants and a vibrant overstory of large, sprawling, broad canopied trees. Hogs, chickens, goats, and rabbits live below. That is the future of our farm. It's the perfect place for our Heart's Pasture.

Learn More About Hogs from Heart's Pasture Farm

Foundation Sows

2025 Piglet Litters

True Foragers: American Guinea Hogs

Here at Heart's Pasture Farm in beautiful northern Michigan, we have a small herd of American Guinea Hogs. In the spring, summer, and fall they enjoy rooting for tubers (roots of plants), eating fallen leaves, and munching on acorns or beech nuts!  They are remarkably well tempered and are around 200 pounds when they reach maturity. This makes AGHs a perfect homestead hog. They are easy to move around, easy to care for, and extremely easy going! Our hogs get to live their best lives just being hogs. This means that, in addition to plenty of fresh water and a sturdy shelter, they receive:

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• Rotational foraging and rooting in our 15 acre woods
• A locally made ration of naturally fertilized, non-GMO, organically grown barley, oats, and/or corn, supplemented with herbs and kelp
• Leftover milk and whey from our goats
• Hardboiled eggs from our pastured chickens
• Local, no-spray hay in the winter
• No soy​
• No growth hormones or medications
• And, of course, lots of belly rubs and love from us!