A Tale of Two Piggies

Two rescued pigs arrived at the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary on 3/20/2010. Ms. Piggy had been rescued off the side of the road in North Carolina with a red stripe painted down her back — the telltale sign that she was marked for slaughter. How she escaped, we do not know, but an awesome woman named Valerie (who happend to be a wildlife rehabilitator and cat rescuer) scooped her up and kept her in suburban Long Island in a large pen her husband built. Ms. Piggy was very well cared for, but now 2 years old and fully-grown she needed more room to be a pig.

Peter had a similar story, but the end result was very different. He was picked up as a tiny runt from a farm where he would’ve languished by a man who was charmed by the young piglet. Figuring he could always give to his brother to slaughter for bacon, the man raised Peter indoors in a marble countertop warehouse. He subsequently fell in love with the little guy, but even with the best intentions his lack of knowledge about pigs was detrimental to Peter’s health — Peter’s diet consisted mostly of meatball heros, pizza, and bags of day-old Dunkin donuts. At only a few months this high-fat and highly inappropriate diet (pigs are naturally vegetarians but will eat anything if hungry enough) caused Peter to have some problems supporting is own weight. Coupled with the fact that he was living on concrete — an unnatural surface for a hooven animal — Peter essentially stopped walking. The man would have to lay down scraps of carpet to get Peter to get up to pee. We arrived in the nick of time, we believe, and hope that with a good diet and plenty of exercise 9-month-old Peter will make a full recovery!