Poor Oliver

Well, I tried.

Oliver has been doing really well and his mouth seems better, so I thought I would see about taking him back to his real family. He walked over to the barn with me and ran right under the fence to go see the others who were all outside.

I knew he had fallen behind size-wise, but I wasn't prepared for how drastic it really was. Though the runt, he really wasn't that much smaller than his siblings at birth. But he was the slowest and the last to eat and lost ground each day. They are now all 12 days old and his siblings are easily TWICE as big. And not just bigger, they are just more robust and mentally advanced than Oliver by far.

The poor guy went out and tried to play but his siblings seemed to regard him as a separate sort of creature. They went after him aggressively several times and finally he gave up and left them alone. Then he tried to nurse on Mama Pig and she seemed to have the same reaction--she seemed alarmed at this random tiny pig asking her for food and simply walked away.

Poor Oliver was getting steadily more forlorn when Kirby (our pug) entered the fray. Kirby has long since learned that you just don't go in the pig pen (Mama Pig has "learned him good" several times) and he was really worried from the outset that Oliver was in there. Finally, hearing Oliver cry, Kirby ran in and started licking his face and then ran in and out trying to get him to follow. And guess what? Oliver did.

So I walked back to the house with Oliver choosing to follow me and Kirby than stay behind. It looks like he is here to stay.

And so now I have to figure out what the heck the longterm Oliver plan is because as much as I want to walk around being a "tough, no-nonsense pig farmer", I am pretty sure it's going to be dang near impossible to take him to market.

Anyone want a pet pig?