We have 2 American Guinea Hogs that we have moving around using the pig fence from Premier1. We have a main pen constructed with hog panels with a portable gate, a 55-gallon drum with a hog waterer mounted in it, and a shelter that is mounted to a large pallet. This whole setup gives us the potential to move everything to a new location within a half-day. This falls under the model of keeping everything portable and low cost while still being highly functional in meeting the needs of the animal.

The hog, pig, or swine however you wish to refer to them are a great recycler and disturber to the land they are on. We are able to feed them food scraps from the dining hall, when they are available, and they are ready to consume anything we give them (although we do not feed them any pork products). Now sometimes they may ignore certain foods and that is fine, at the end of the day their leftovers, bedding, and manure ends up going to a compost pile setup right next to their pen. This helps in keeping down odors by removing the manure from their pen and placing it into to system that will break it down.

The hog’s greatest gift to the land is its wonderful nose, when applied to the ground will become a makeshift plow. The greatest gift with most things can also be its worst nightmare as we see the destruction feral hogs have done to certain regions of the country, it all comes down to land management in how long we allow the animals to be on a given piece of ground.