But I don't wanna be a pig...

It’s appropriate that as we start this, The Year of the Pig, that I finally accept that this pig will never really be a pig.

This is Peppa. If you follow this page, you may remember the tiny little piglet that fell off a semi heading to a confinement farm and was saved from being run over on the interstate by my very plucky 15-year-old nephew. As luck would have it, he was driving that day to our farm and so after catching the wee pig, he held her on his lap and brought her here...and here she has remained ever since.

When Peppa arrived, she was tiny (confinement farms wean super early, typically around 3 weeks compared to the 7-9 week mark we aim for), dehydrated and had hurt her leg in the fall and subsequent afternoon of dodging cars. We had no similarly aged pigs and she needed special care so she was put in a box stall by herself and received lots of TLC from both the humans and our Great Pyrenees dog Punzi, who climbed in and out of Peppa’s stall several times a day to “care” for her. This actually escalated into Punzi even spontaneously lactating for the piglet (something she has also done around lambs and baby goats—-she REALLY wants to be a mom!)

And so it is not entirely surprising that Peppa no longer thinks she is a pig. She is, at minimum, a dog and in her estimation, probably a human. Though we got her some similarly aged gilts to be friends with about 5 weeks in, it didn’t matter. By that time she had begun living outside in the yard with Punzi and begging for pieces of my morning granola bar when I got in the car to go to work.

And despite MONTHS of trying to convince her she is really a pig, it is not worked even one bit. She cries when she sees any human, cries for Punzi and has almost zero social interaction with any of the other pigs. Her attitude being penned with other pigs is one of vast horror—kind of how a cat would act if you set them in a pen of goobery puppies. She gives this ⬇️ intense look of “Help me!!!”

And so here I am, contemplating how she can have run of the yard with Punzi without digging up every square inch of turf...🤔