Justin Rhodes and his kids receive two American guinea hog piglets as a gift from friends Janae, Milo, Evelyn, David, and Emerson. The family sets up a temporary stall, learns how to handle the pigs by the legs, and feeds them grass and alfalfa pellets. The kids interact with the calm piglets while the group discusses rotating them between cattle panels for fresh grazing.
Today we're getting pigs.
How does it make you feel to be getting pigs on the farm?
Uh, little— to get little pigs.
What are you gonna do when we get our pigs?
Ride them.
You're gonna ride them? Did you catch anything in your mouse? Your rat trap. Did they take away seeds and they didn't trip the trap? Did Mama's seeds get protected?
Yeah.
You know what this tells me? It's not a mouse, it's a rat. Lily, you watch and make sure I don't run over any, okay?
Hey buddy, hey, what kind of animal?
Nice, good job! It's over here by their shed. Good job, buddy! Wow, no way!
Only like me and Jonah. Whenever I went in there and whistled and they would perk up their ears, and then they would know that there was alfalfa pellets coming, so then they would all come to me.
You know what we're gonna do now? Any guesses? Get ready for the pigs. Yeah, you ready? All right, everybody grab a wheelbarrow.
Oh, pig fencing.
Well, we're not gonna set them up on the fencing yet. We're gonna train them in a stall first. First thing we had to do is get ready, locate feed pans. Will you go get our feed pan, Jonah? All right, go wash it out, please, with that scrub brush. Thank you, buddy. Here's another one. We might do our automatic waterer. I have no idea how to water a pig. I don't know, they're probably too short to get out of that yellow bucket or pink bucket. We take this too just in case we use that. The owners will know what we do for water. Thank you, Jonah, those look good. Okay guys, I think we're ready. We have feed pans, potential waterers, we have our soaked feed, we have our stall ready.
Aren't they delivering them right now?
They're coming. The people are going to deliver them. So you guys look out for them. Put down mulch inside of this area here.
It don't poop in here, Papa.
Oh, okay. You hanging on? Lily, would you grab our camera?
What card? This one? Pull it out. What do you want me to do? I'll hold a camera for you.
This is recording. Let's continue getting— be careful of the lettuce, Jonah. Let's continue getting all this crazy amount of mulch out of this garden. What happened here, Mr. Brown? You knocked over the wheelbarrow and it was almost full.
Yeah.
Let's get it up. Everybody carry their pitchfork.
Let's go unload it. What's up, Mr. Brown?
Beep beep.
Yeah, I like talking.
Josiah, will you grab my camera? Check it. The hay's kept it mulched good. Okay kids, I'm gonna dump it out in the middle and everybody can spread it evenly. After that, we took a break, got out of the heat. The people arrived around 5 o'clock. The pigs are here in a minivan. That's a good sign if they came in a minivan. They're carrying 2 pigs in a minivan. That probably means we're gonna be— it's gonna be easy to put them in the stall. Hi.
Say hi. Hey, Janae.
Justin.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
This is Milo, Evelyn, David, and Emerson.
Hi guys.
You want to see him?
So that's what they do when they get—
carry that and just bring it wherever we need to and then open it.
And yeah, so they, um, they— that's what they do when they get stressed out, just go to sleep.
Pretty much. They slept most of the way. Yeah.
They seem like they're pretty laid back, um, until you try to catch them.
She is the master at catching pigs though.
How did you catch them? You got to give us a tip. We know nothing about raising pigs.
How do you catch them?
Catching the legs.
You have to grab their legs. Sometimes you do.
So do you have them in a pen or do you put them in the forest?
Um, so we keep them in two cattle panels that are in like a round, so they're tied together on each side, and then we move them every day. Ah, so they get fresh grass every day. These ones are mostly grass-fed, so they're a little on the thinner side, but if you feed them more, supplement more, they'll fill out nice.
They've been, they've been traveling, what, 4 hours?
4, 4 and a half.
I knew these people were giving them to us, but I didn't know exactly why, so I asked.
You all have made such a huge impact on our family, and, um, recently my husband made a leap to quit his 9-to-5 job and farm full-time, and I don't think we would have had the courage to do that without, without you all. So we just wanted to do something to give back.
Well, bless you. Bless your heart. Thank you very much, and best of luck in that.
Thank you.
So sweet. This community is so amazing. And hopefully it's not in vain. Hopefully we raise some awareness for the awesomeness of pigs, the awesomeness of the American guinea hog. They do not seem too stressed out, do they?
They're chill at the moment. Do they get crazy? Not really, just if you're trying to catch up them. As they grow and get older, they'll become more and more friendly once they get used to you. Like, we have some that will drop for belly rubs. So not that you necessarily want to do them because of your plans, but only if you really grab a stick and—
no, it's okay.
Rub their belly.
They all know. Those are our feed and water pans. Will that do for a while?
Absolutely.
Okay, and this is our stall where the sheep were. Our plan is just to put them in here. For a couple of days to acclimate and us train them to an electric fence.
Yeah.
And then we'll move them out.
Yeah.
Okay. You like to pet them? There they come. So they're used to— they're used to kids. If we stand over here, maybe they'll come out. You could tip it up, Jonah, if you want. Slowly though. There they go. There they are. You guys are going to till this up, stir it up for us, aren't you? Soaked feed.
This is a room.
Okay, you got some feed? Okay, I've got some feed. Mama's got the water.
I fed them grass.
Oh good, did they eat it?
Yeah, they're eating it.
Okay, go— it helps if you find your rice knife.
I kind of want to squeeze them right before they go in.
Okay, they're hungry. Right by the door.
Well, they're eating right by the door for one. Oh, because they brought the grass there.
Yeah.
I'm glad you guys are feeling at home. How's that? Already after getting them in, I feel like So relaxed. They're so laid back. Look, look, I can, I can pet them. They said forget the grass. Oh, they'll, they'll chow down on it. They'll probably eat all we would give them. And these guys are so chill. They're so small.
Grab the water and pour it.
I will. Now these are a lot calmer than those sheep. Those sheep were like jumping up the walls. Oh, look, Lily, they let you pet them.
They're a lot calmer than the sheep. It takes a while to get them to be able to do this.
Okay, they love that. They're gonna about to eat all that grain. Then we got them some grass, we got them some apple cider vinegar and some water.
I want to pick up pigs.
Could you want to? Come on, she'll help you. Come here, pet him.
There you go.
Yeah, I gotcha. Are you nervous about this, Mr. Brown?
I think I'm— yeah, he's nervous about it.
I gotcha, I gotcha. I believe we could catch them and carry them if we absolutely had to. So this is totally non-intimidating first-time pick experience so far. Very happy about that.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
