These Guinea swine were red in color, and it is said that the breed was brought to America from west Africa by slave traders.

It was to these animals that Washington fed the by-products of his distillery.
In the slaughtering of animals he tried experiments as he did in so many other matters.

In 1768 he killed a wether sheep which weighed one hundred three pounds gross.

He found that it made sixty pounds of meat worth three pence per pound, five and a half of tallow at seven and a half pence, three of wool at fifteen pence, and the skin was worth one shilling and three pence, a total of L1.3.5.One object of such experiments was to ascertain whether it was more profitable to butcher animals or sell them on the hoof.
Washington also raised chickens, turkeys, swans, ducks, geese and various other birds and beasts.

In 1788 Gouverneur Morris sent him two Chinese pigs and with them "a pair of Chinese geese, which are really the foolishest geese I ever beheld; for they choose all times for setting but in the spring, and one of them is even now [November] actually engaged in that business." Of some golden pheasants that had been brought from China the General said that before seeing the birds he had considered that pictures of them must be "only works of fancy, but now I find them to be only Portraits." The fact is that his friends and admirers sent him so many feathered or furred creatures that toward the end of his life he was the proprietor of a considerable zoo.
Notwithstanding mismanagement by his employees and slaves, Washington accumulated much valuable domestic stock.