An Animal Lover Turns Professional With Impeccable House Pigs, Beastly Actors

Jama Hedgecoth always loved animals, but she never quite expected it to come to this: She sells housebroken, exotic pigs and runs an animal talent agency that represents a variety of non-human stars.

On a 25-acre farm south of Atlanta, with the help of her husband, Charlie, and four children, Hedgecoth tends a menagerie of about 300 critters, including dogs, cats, raccoons, foxes, deer, goats, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, an ostrich, a miniature horse, a 300-pound hog and a herd of pint-size pigs.

She trains and sells the petite porkers as pets through Designer Pigs, one of her ventures. As for the rest, some are stars represented by her other business, The Animal Agency, and others are the family’s pets.

“When I was a kid, we traveled all over the world because my father is an evangelist, and we could never have animals like this,” Hedgecoth said. “When I got married 17 years ago, I told my husband, ‘My dream is to live on a farm and have every animal that’s feasible to own.’ ”

Five years ago, the Hedgecoths got their farm, along with some dogs and cats. In 1987, Hedgecoth got a chance to demonstrate her talent as a trainer when a friend asked her where he might find 15 cats for a kitty-litter commercial. What the producers had feared might be eight hours in cat hell turned out to be a 30-minute lark, and a business was born.

Animal Talent Agents

Hedgecoth and her partner, Bryan Hudson, began contacting advertising agencies and others who might need a well-behaved animal now and then.

In less than two years, The Animal Agency has worked on about 100 jobs, half of them still-photo modeling sessions and the other half TV commercials, mostly for agencies in Atlanta.

Her Benji-look-alike dog, Amber, starred in a Honda Accord spot. Roy, a huge tom turkey, starred in a ham ad.

For a Reebok shoes spot she brought along Hickory the goat, Scarlett the miniature pig and 81-year-old farmer James Roy Goggans with his sneaker-shod cow, Daisy, whose stage name is Bessie.

The Animal Agency also supplied the animals for “Dying for Love,” a TV movie recently filmed in Georgia in which Hedgecoth’s husband and father had bit parts.

If she doesn’t have a particular animal for a job, she will find one--and train it.

Trains for Special Jobs

“If you call us and say you need a white goose that will walk on a leash for a child, I’ll tell you, ‘You give me three days,’ ” she said.

Clients are charged $100 an hour and up. “What they pay for is Bryan and me, our know-how in how to work with the animals,” she said.

Last year, Hedgecoth got into the pet pig business with rare, ugly-but-hip Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs that sell for $1,500 each. She also breeds an uncommon line of miniature African pigs that grow to be two inches taller but are $1,200 cheaper.

“They’re real special,” she said. “They love to car ride. . . . And when you buy a pig from me, the little pig’s housebroken and spoiled rotten.”