WE’RE PORKERS NOT PETS!
Inspired by the stars, families are buying cute ‘micro pigs’... only to dump them on rescue centres when they grow to full size and cause carnage around the home...
YOU can hear the inhabitants long before you see them: a cacophony of grunts, squeals and screeches that crescendos as you head up the driveway.
Then you see what’s to blame: a melee of pigs, in all shapes, colours and sizes, snuffling and snorting their way blissfully around the fouracre site.
There are 62 of them to be precise, from the monstrously big Elizabeth, a 290kg, 6ft long Gloucester Old Spot and Kunekune cross, to little Ollie, a cream spotted pig the size of a large bull dog.
Black and white, brown and cream, and, of course, pale piggy pink — they’re all represented here. There is one size, however, that these pigs are categorically not, and that is small, or ‘micro’ — which is how most of them were marketed to their previous owners.
And that is the reason that they’re here, at Pigs Inn Heaven, a sanctuary dedicated to caring only for unwanted pet pigs. Janet Devereux who founded it in 2011, has warned that it’s being ‘inundated’ with unwanted pets.
‘Most were bought as micro-pigs — but there is no such thing,’ says Janet briskly. ‘They simply don’t exist. A micro-pig is a piglet — then it grows, whatever the breeders claim.’ And it grows . . .
There are all manner of people offering ‘micro-pigs’ — sometimes referred to as ‘teacup pigs’ — for sale, from €150 to €1,000, accompanied by adorable pictures of tiny pink snouts poking out of flower pots.
THE reality is different: even so-called miniature breeds such as the Vietnamese potbellied pig or Kunekune grow up to 70kg — or 150kg and more if over-fed, which is common when they are kept as pets in domestic environments. Other breeds will grow as large as a commercially-farmed pig, topping the scales at anything up to 300kg.
‘Often breeders say the pigs will grow to be the size of a small dog at maximum,’ Janet says. ‘In fact, they grow longer, wider, stronger and heavier. The simple fact is that no one knows how big their pig will be until it grows up.’
Or equally significantly how long it will live, which is between ten and 20 years. In short, you can end up with an awful lot more pork than you bargained for wandering round your living room for an awfully long time.
This is why so many end up being looked after by Janet at the sanctuary she runs with her partner Peter Davidson. The demand for places is growing: currently four or five calls every week from people who want to offload their pig.
At its peak last year, the couple and their co-worker Martin Lewis were looking after 80 pigs. They have since managed to rehome 17 to people who give the animals what they need: land and fresh air.
In the past decade the trend for pigs-as-house-pets has burgeoned, fuelled by celebrity endorsement.
George Clooney, the Beckhams, Miley Cyrus, Tom Daley and Paris Hilton have all been photographed with pet pigs. Hilton has posed in photo shoots and boasted about how she liked cuddling up to ‘Miss Piglette’ in bed.
At the Golden Globe awards in 2010, the gift bags given to the stars included gift vouchers for pet pigs.
Janet and Peter read these reports with increasing alarm. ‘We knew the celebrity trend for “micro-pigs” was only going to go one way — and that was a lot of abandoned pigs,’ she says.
Until a few years ago, Janet, 53, was living in a city and running her own hair and beauty salon. She was, however, always an animal lover, as is businessman and manufacturer Peter, although she admits it was on a whim that they set up a website offering to rehome unwanted pigs on farmland near their home.
‘I don’t think we really knew what we were taking on,’ she confides now. They learned soon enough: in the first month, they got 25 phone calls from distressed owners no longer able to handle their growing pigs.
The pigs are brought to Pigs Inn Heaven by owners from all over the British Isles. Yet while the geography may have varied, the stories were pretty similar.
A lot of people understand that pigs aren’t meant to live in houses and need at least an acre of land with an area of firm cement for good trotter health, mud to dig and wallow in, and grass to graze on. But others have foolishly tried to incorporate them into all manner of domestic sets ups.
Housing estates, tiny two-up twodown terraces, city centre flats: Janet and Martin have extracted pigs from all of them.
‘One guy kept his pig in a two-bedroom Manchester city centre flat and took it for walks,’ she said. ‘Another guy kept his in his spare bedroom. It had no exercise and was fed so much that we could barely get it out the door.’
There are plenty more such stories. Elliot, a four-year-old pig, who slept in his owner’s bed. Gloucester Old Spot crosses Elizabeth and Hayley, which were sold as micro-pigs but grew to nearly 300kg.
And Cocoa, a six-year-old rescued from a one-bed flat. Or Gormy, Lissy and Hope, three sisters, whose pensioner owner could not cope with them any more.
And, although we don’t have a sanctuary for pigs alone, Ireland has had similar cases like that of Napoleon, the 16 stone porker who was living in a Dublin flat before being rescued by the National Exotic Animal Sanctuary in Co. Meath.
One pig now in Janet’s charge, Wilbur, had lived on comedian Dom Joly’s farm. There he had enjoyed impeccable conditions but became aggressive and grumpy after Joly brought in another pig, Sir Francis Bacon, to keep him company. Realising the duo would never hit it off, Joly contacted Pigs Inn Heaven and a pigswap was arranged.
Janet and Peter welcomed Wilbur who has settled in beautifully, while Joly rehomed Stanley, a mild-mannered pig which had been found wandering the streets of Accrington, Lancashire, some years ago.
‘He’s very happy living with Sir Francis Bacon so it has all worked out well,’ Janet adds.
MOST stories, however, are not so heart-warming. Some pigs have been extracted from conditions that were downright cruel.
For example, Ollie, who, at a year old is the sanctuary’s youngest resident and was rescued from a pub where he was being sold as bait in a dog fight.
Or Apache, who had been kept in a house in a pen so small that he wasn’t able to stand up in it.
‘He had sores along his back from where he’d scraped it on the top of the pen,’ says Janet. ‘It was heart-break-
ing. Pigs naturally root — it’s part of their behaviour. They dig using their snout. It can ruin your garden and if they live in your living room they will do it to your carpets, too,’ she warns.
‘They have a highly developed sense of smell — a pig’s snout is 2,000 times more sensitive than humans’ and can smell food from a large distance. I’ve heard of kitchens being ripped apart due to pigs’ highly-developed sense of smell.
‘Pigs suffer emotionally, too. They’re naturally pack animals and should be kept in twos at the very least. They get lonely. We’ve seen pigs die of a broken heart.
‘Even when kept in unsatisfactory conditions, they form such a strong attachment to their owner that they struggle to be separated.’
They’re not the only ones forming attachments: Janet loves each pig in her care, all of whom she can recognise and name on sight.
‘It’s easy really — they all have their own little character,’ she says. ‘Some will follow you round all day and some like a quick stroke and belly rub before they wander off.’
As if on cue, Daisy — a nine-yearold, large Kunekune — sticks her snout through the gate seeking a gesture of affection. ‘She will let you stroke behind her ears and rub her belly all day long,’ says Janet with a smile.
Running the Pigs Inn takes both time and money, with Janet and Martin both working nine-hour days, six days a week, with one of them always on call.
Annual costs — food, hay for bedding, repairs to shelters and fences, transport and wages — are around €300,000. Peter subsidises some of this through his manufacturing business but they rely on donations and goodwill.
In an ideal world, of course, there would be no need for a pig sanctuary. Janet wishes there was a law to prevent the selling of ‘micro-pigs’. In the meantime, she has one piece of advice. ‘Never forget a micro-pig