American Guinea Hogs

It starts with the right breed

The American Guinea hog, to this day, is listed as a "threatened" heritage breed hog on the Livestock Conservancy's Website.  This is mainly due to displacement of the Guinea Hog by larger corn-fed breeds favored by industrial farms.  You see, Guinea Hogs prefer pasture over grain, and their finished weight is relatively light at 100 to 150 pounds at 1 year old.  

Here at Sol, we raise our Guineas on pasture spring, summer, and fall.  Two hogs are put in 6' by 10' "tractors", or moveable pens.  The pens are moved up to twice a day as needed on fresh pasture.  This allows us to manage small pastures accurately eliminating overgrazing and in turn replanting.  As long as these little guys have enough pasture to eat, they do not dig up the soil, allowing pastures to regenerate quickly.  Like everything here at Sol, they are in constant motion, fertilizing the pasture as they move and keeping pests and disease at bay.

Come Winter, we move the hogs into stalls in our open air barn, keeping them safe and warm and allowing pastures to rest and regenerate for Spring.  Because they do not have access to pasture at this time, they are fed a small ration of Certified Organic Grain and our own Certified Organic Hay.   

Anakin, our resident boar, and Padme, our resident gilt will begin breeding late Spring 2018 in hopes of farrowing our own litter of piglets late Summer 2018.  We have been raising our hogs in accordance with the USDA Organic Standards and have applied to have them added to our Organic Products and Organic Certificate for 2018.  Like most of our products, we plan to pre-sell whole hogs direct to consumer.  Stay tuned!