Pig Books
Looking to keep hogs? We used these pig books when we first got started, and we continue to refer to them whenever we need to refine our hogs' housing, diet, breeding or other management techniques. It's true that hogs can still live up to their traditional title of "mortgage lifter", but only if the hog producer is well informed and up to speed on cost effective management options. While everyone seems to have an opinion on how hogs should be managed, these books will give you sound guidance for yours. Or perhaps simply help you decide whether hogs are for you. And some just make for some great reading, whether you ever raise a piglet or not. If you have swine questions, we encourage you to look through these books. Enjoy browsing the collection, and we hope you find your answers here!
Small Scale Pig Raising by Dirk van Loon
This is the pig book most of us reach for first when we have pig questions. Dirk van Loon has many years of experience raising hogs on a small family farm and his book is a veritable treasure trove of how-to information. It is also clear that he enjoys these animals and respects them. His words will help you not only raise them profitably, but also respectfully. This book has seen a great deal of use on our farm.
Storey's Guide To Raising Pigs by Kelly Klober
This pig book brings together two important names in small scale farming - author Kelly Klober has written extensively about sustainable, profitable small scale livestock raising, and Storey Publications have worked for years to provide a wide range of homesteading and family farming titles to the world. While I do not have this particular book in my collection, I already know that both the author and the publisher have a great deal of experience in livestock management. Any book from them would have a place of honor on my shelves. This is the third edition of this title, so I'm sure it has not only been well received, but also recently updated with current information.
Productive Swine Husbandry by G.E. Day
This is a farm manual originally published in 1863, and the language is from that era. But this little pig book is chock full of how to raise swine cost effectively on the small family farm, including putting hogs on pasture. Pastured pork is an exciting old idea enjoying a renaissance, but there are precious few texts on how to pasture hogs. This book is one of them. The link below is for a printed version published by Lippincot's Farm Manuals, but electronic print-on-demand copies are also available.
Holy Cows and Hog Heaven, by Joel Salatin
This is a book aimed more at consumers than producers. But the wise producer will find within its pages not only information about pastured livestock production, but also some tools for describing the values of that production to customers. It's one thing to raise high quality meat. It's another to successfully sell it at reasonable prices. I highly recommend all of Joel Salatin's books and this is another good 'un.
Our Successful Farming and Ranching Books
We released our very first self-published book. The Chicken Coop Manual in 2014. It is a full color guide to conventional and alternative poultry housing options, including 8 conventional stud construction plans, 12 alternative housing methods, and almost 20 different design features. This book is available on Amazon.com and as a PDF download. Please visit The Chicken Coop Manual page for more information.
Rabbit Colonies: Lessons Learned
We started with rabbits in 2002, and we've been experimenting with colony management ever since. Fast forward to 2017, when I decided to write another book, this time about colony management. The book is chock-full of practical information, and is available from both Amazon and as a PDF download. Please visit the Rabbit Colonies page for more information.
The Pastured Pig Handbook
We are currently working on our next self-published book: The Pastured Pig Handbook. This particular book addresses a profitable, popular and successful hog management approach which sadly is not yet well documented. Our handbook, will cover all the various issues involved with pastured hog management, including case studies of numerous current pastured pig operations. If you have any questions about this book, please Contact Us.
Weblog Archives
We published a farm blog between January 2011 and April 2012. We reluctantly ceased writing them due to time constraints, and we hope to begin writing them again someday. In the meantime, we offer a Weblog Archive so that readers can access past blog articles at any time.
If and when we return to writing blogs, we'll post that news here. Until then, happy reading!