Choosing a Homestead Pig

Hello everyone!

So in a few years my partner and I are going to be establishing a homestead. One of the first animals we wanted to bring on was pigs. My heart was set on GOS hogs however, my family and I are eyeing up the mangalitsa now because of it's friendly temperament. The most important factor to us is friendly and docile personalities. This is for safety and to help my family feel more comfortable around full size pigs. From most important to least, other factors would be hardiness, mothering abilities, thriftiness (the ability to find it's own food), and meat production. We are more interested in taste vs amount, and I personally like lots of fat for flavor and cooking. We don't mind a breed that doesn't have super massive litters or grows at sonic speed for super efficiency. Personally I was considering a mangalitsa x gos x tamworth/hereford/berkshire cross.

So, what are yalls opinions on a good, friendly and hardy pig that produces tasty meat and is able to be a bit hands off?

Go talk with a few pig farmers in the area and see what they are doing.  You'll know when you see what you want.

I favor KuneKune for many of the reasons you mention.  The buy in price is high.

I'll throw in American Guinea Hogs for a thought. They are smaller than many pigs, but known to have a friendly disposition, do well on forage, and depending on who you talk to, the flavor is almost as good, as good, or better than the famed mangalitsa.

If you have neighbours doing the homestead pig thing, as opposed to production operations, see what they have going on, as Gray suggested. You can't keep crosses that you can't get, unless you can find the genetics where you are.

I know for certain that some of your fears are justified. I believe Duroc is the meat breed I am thinking of that was bred for rapid weight gain and feed conversion at the expense of temperament. I think making ease of handling and docility a priority is key, especially if they are interacting with people and other animals.

I hear great things about the AGH. And the Mangalitsa, and the Kune Kune. It is a matter of what's available to you, from how far away, and how much you're wanting to pay.

Good luck, though, and keep us posted.

-CK

Hi Chris,

Good point on the “how far away”.   I am headed to Arkansas on a round trip of 12 hours drive time to pick up a KuneKune boar.  Some would find that drive to be unreasonable.  To me it is routine.

I hear that, John. I would do as much for any animal I had to work with, if it guaranteed better outcomes, and further, I think, if necessary, if they were augmenting my breeding stock.

-CK

We recently bought a bred AGH sow and she is so far above our expectations.  We had built a long hoop house for her with extensions at both sides of her pen out of cattle panel trellises arched to make them predator proof so she would be safe.  However, planned to turn her out a little if she appeared to be willing to “stay at home” and not try to get out as our perimeter fences are not pig proof.  Now we just go out and open her gate every morning and shut up at night so she is safe from coyotes.  She never wanders far and comes when we call her or if she sees us.  

She was raised in an environment with no green forage and in a small paddock and given pig pellets as ration.  She didn’t know what pasture was for, and these are supposed to be foraging/grazing pigs.  I started with dipping grasses and clover into yogurt which she loved and then smeared some on the pasture.  Now she herds with the goats and eats with them and forages just great.  I’m definitely impressed.  Also, her demeanor is so meek and gentle.  You approach her and touch her side and she rolls over for a belly rub.  She follows us around like a puppy and lies down with the dog for naps.  We just love having her here.  

When my husband was barely a teenager his parents had a dairy farm they had just bought.   But it came with about 10 mature brood sows (don’t know the breed, but they were a large mix), and 10 young sows.  His math teacher suggested they could make more money with pigs than with cows.  He did the math and sure enough, looked good on paper.  That same year milk prices bottomed out and they could not sell milk for enough to pay for the grain they bought, not to mention all the labor growing and putting up hay and the grain they did grow.  Horses were becoming optional, as they had always used them for plowing.  Sold the horses, turned the horse paddocks into farrowing stalls (winter pigs because they bred too late the first year).  The milk got turned into clabbered milk and fed to pigs and when they took that load to market (about a 100 feeder pigs) when people found out they were milk fed, brought 4 x the regular price.  His parents paid off the farm in three or four years, totally, from money made from the pigs, but of course, the milk was a big input too, so the cows indirectly contributed too.   He ended up managing the farm at age 14, still going to school and working part time at another job after school, while his father was away in town at his “paid” job.  I’m so very proud of him.  He’s 79 and still working as hard as ever.  

Temperament is not guaranteed with breed. As someone who has eaten several mean guinea hogs I can vouch for that.

I did a whole thing on guinea hogs on permies so you can look up my post on why I adore them. I do adore them.

We love our KuneKunes! They're smaller, friendly, hardy, grazing, slow growth lard pigs, and their meat is especially prized for charcuterie.

I was initially pretty set on running mangalitsas on our land (the idea of a Kentucky made iberico style ham is extremely attractive to me), however coming from a friend who's family owns a few restaurants and grew them, they found that they had so much fat that the meat yield was tiny, he claimed that the chops were half the size of other heritage breeds they've grown in the past and too small to sell at the restaurant.  Because of this, I'm considering opting for a mix of mangalitsa with another heritage breed like guinea hogs, GOS or kune kune.  

We chose Idaho Pasture Pigs primarily based on the research I did looking for a pig with two traits: a pig that forages on pasture and a pig that has less instinctual tendency to plow up the soil. We brought 3 weaned piglets home last week, and immediately started foraging on grasses and clovers. We do also give them a daily pig ration that we get from a regional farm that mills non-gmo grains. They have had their snouts in the soil a little, which I do expect, but I they have not been engaging in the more stereotypical pig behavior of plowing the land. I believe that part of a pigs tendency to turn over the soil is them seeking minerals in the soil. Years ago I read an article that I've never forgotten about a homesteading family that had pigs, and they moved to a new farm. At the new location their pigs developed a habit of tearing up the soil, a behavior they did not exhibit at their old farm. After some time, the farmers figured it out. The mineral the pigs received at the old farm was unavailable at any store at their new town and they switched brands. Upon giving the old mineral to the pigs again the plowing behavior ceased.

The feed I give them is different than what they were getting at the farm they were born on and I do also add a little kelp and a little Sea-90 as a supplement to their daily ration. So far they seem real happy and if they're not foraging or eating their grain, they're lounging and sleeping.

Pot Bellied are basically a kunekune but sell for 1/10 the price. Folks over look them because they're not a celebrity breed.