We don't have much land.

A lot of homesteaders on here have many acres, and it must be wonderful! We, however, only have a little land, barely enough to be considered a homestead actually, but we are grateful for what we have and strive to do the best we can with what we have.

The question of raising pork has come and gone many times around here.

(We no longer eat pork, but at the time we had no inhibitions about it.)

We wanted to raise our own meat. We were getting tired of chicken. (We eat our chickens, and they are great, but there are only so many different ways to cook the birds.) We thought about making a small pen and buying feeder pigs to raise to butchering size. Two problems there. Two hogs is too many. One hog would be lonely. (Around here, we care very much about the happiness and welfare of our animals. Yes. Even though we eat some of them.)
Confining pigs to a small pen deprives the pigs of being able to wander around, forage, and root.
Plus, pigs stink, ya'll... At least, they do when confined to a small pen.

Enter our fabulous neighbors.

They had some of the same issues. Two pigs were too many. BUT they didn't mind putting raising them in what they thought was a good sized pen. They asked us if we wanted to go in on it with them. We would split chores and feed costs, and the pigs could both grow on their property. We would use our crate to get the piglets and our trailer to haul them to the butcher. A win-win situation.

New piggies

Well, it went fine. The pigs grew well. But... we did have some disagreements about how they should be raised. I wanted to give them a diet high in things like veggie scraps, leftovers, etc. I wanted to limit the grain intake and treat them holistically. It was never an arguing matter, but they insisted on giving the hogs a gravity feeder with unlimited feed because that is the way 'his daddy did it'. I gave them scraps, but I don't think they really liked it, and they asked me to stop feeding them anything in the last month. The pigs were only allowed to eat corn so they would taste better, I guess.
They did allow us to use only diatomaceous earth for a wormer.
In the end, the pigs grew fine.
They ended up being mostly fat. Not surprising considering they were given unlimited feed and nothing to do. The meat was good once you cut all the fat off. (I still have jars of lard from those pigs!)

BUT.

My husband and I were not comfortable raising pigs in this way. I thought perhaps our neighbors would see how this was not the best way, but they were happy with what they got and how they did it.
We had a talk with them.
It was a nice talk. We just said that we wanted to try something else. We had heard of this breed of hog.

American Guinea hogs were supposed to be a manageable size, graze on grass, be docile and safe to handle, and just an all-around great pig to have on a homestead. We wanted to try breeding this kind of hog, so would not be dependent on purchasing a hog every year. We hoped they understood, but we wanted to go this route rather than raising another pig with them.

It was fine with them.
They knew someone else who was interesting in raising a hog with them, so it would work out great.
This guy has a source of free or cheap corn, so the pigs now get fed half pig feed, half corn, unlimited.
But that's none of my business anymore.

We did our research and found a male and a female piglet American Guinea hog to raise!

But this post has gone on long enough, I will continue in part two!

Now you know how we came to the decision to raise these funny little pigs!

Thanks for reading!

Part 2
Part 3

badges courtesy of @daddykirbs