I'm Louis - the noisier Pinkie pig

The Pinkies are the most recent arrival onto Curly Tail Farm so by rights they should be the last personalities to be profiled on the website, but they put their hooves down and insisted on being number 1. This handsome speciman is Louis. His brother Simon is a little shy so declined to be photographed for this article – maybe another time he said.

You might be wondering how I can tell 2 almost identical pink piggies apart? It’s actually very easy to tell them apart visually, you see “Louis has a Bluey”. Simon has 2 brown eyes while Louis has one that is brown and one that is blue. Having said that, they have very different personalities and I’m pretty good now at picking one pig from the other without spotting that one blue eye. Louis is far more outgoing and assertive – you can see he was far from camera shy this afternoon…in fact he initially thought the mobile phone was food.  Pigs are like that – anything and everything has the potential to be eaten.  My foot included at times.

As you can see, they have rings through their noses. My preference is very much to not have rings in the noses or ears of any of my animals but this is how they arrived and if you’ve had anything to do with pigs you’ll know that it’s easier to leave the rings in than to try to remove them. These guys are not going to stand still while I snip each ring and gently remove them – it would cause more pain for both of us. From time to time one or the other of them has a bleeding snout where they must have knocked their delicate nose on something and pulled the ring a little. Ouch. Nose rings are cruel – they’re not put there for decoration but to discourage said piggies from exhibiting natural porcine behaviours, like rooting with their snouts. My theory is “if pigs are inclined to root, let them root”.

These piggies were never part of the grand plan for Curly Tail Farm – I don’t know how they got here. I woke up one morning to D calling out “are you awake?” When I grunted (excuse the pun) in the affirmative she then said “I think there are 2 piglets in our pig paddock”. One would think that is a good place for piglets but there hadn’t been any piglets there the night before so how would they have gotten in there?  Many months ago we’d had 15 piglets who liked treating fences as a challenge so had made it pretty much escape-proof. Having woken earlier than planned, I pulled on some clothes, stepped into my gumboots and wandered out to the pig paddock to get a closer look at the two little creatures running around in a bit of a state. Janet next door raises very small dogs so I wondered if a couple of pups had gone on an early morning walk to see us, but no, it really was two little pink piglets.  Bizarre!

It was raining and cold so our first concern was getting them warm and dry and providing them with food and water – THEN working out what to do with them. We had a little temporary goat house that we made when we bought Yoda home so we put fresh straw in the bottom and put some soft barley meal inside for them to eat. Barley meal is what our pigs have for dinner most days (when they don’t have restaurant food scraps) – we mix it with water (warm during winter) and make it into a porridge that they seem to enjoy.  It’s cheaper than buying pig nuts (which they have as a treat) and we can buy it in bulk – usually 6-10 of the 40kg sacks are delivered providing me with the challenge of moving it from where it was delivered to the pig food area.  I can lift a 25kg sace of pigfood no trouble at all, but 40kg?  That is HEAVY but where there’s a will, there’s a way.  But that’s another story.

Two timid boys

You can tell from their body language this first morning that they were frightened and trying to hide from us. I don’t know how old they were – weaned but not much more than a few weeks old. Oh, and both boys which made that “do we keep them” decision more difficult. No lifestyle blocker wants to have 2 entire boars to look after – so if we were to keep them, they would need to be neutered. D and I are both a soft touch with animals and I’m vegetarian so it’s always a concern to me that if I’m unable to continue caring for any of my pets, they might become food for a new owner. My 5 Kune Kunes are “probably” safe as the breed aren’t considered good eating, however some people will eat them. These Pinkies though are most likely Large Whites – they’re not bred as cute intelligent pets, they are raised as bacon, pork, hams. That’s their destiny. Within the first day of these little guys arriving we knew that if we gave them up they would be snapped up by a farmer but it would be to raise them for the freezer. How could we send them to their death? Anyone who knows me knows that I simply couldn’t do it.

So the Pinkies gained names and they were neutered before they got too much bigger.  I persisted with getting nearer to them.  The key was food – I would feed them and quietly approach them as they ate and place my hand on their backs, talking to them.  Simon was a little more frightened than Louis but over time they both learned to trust me and now come running when they see or hear me coming.  I know it’s mostly cupboard love but I also know that it’s trust.  They know I’m one of the good guys.  Nothing in the world means as much to me as gaining the trust of a once-frightened animal.

We still have no idea who bought the Pinkies to us but I can only hope it was someone who wanted to save them from being fattened up and slaughtered – although please don’t take that as an invitation to drop off animals left, right and centre. I simply can’t afford to feed an endless supply of hungry animals, not to mention vet bills should any of them need medical care.

This is how Simon and Louis now spend their days: