This is Daisy - with my daughter, Mei Le - on the day she arrived on our farm - Sunday, May 6, 2007. I adopted her from a kind older man near Newmarket who had got the piglet 5 years ago for the grand-kids, and ended up with her living in his laundry room in a dog x-pen - very overweight and inactive.
He obviously cared a great deal about her. She was spayed and vaccinated as a young pig, and obviously indulged. However, as she became larger and larger, she became unwilling to go outside and the vicious cycle of over-eating and inactivity led to her extreme obesity. In addition, her feet are considerably overgrown.
Daisy appears to be "fat-blind" in that she doesn't see well, if at all. I suspect she sees shadows & movement in bright-enough light, but that's it. In addition, her hearing is not good - which may also be caused by the obesity.
I picked Daisy up from her suburban home on Sunday afternoon. Actually - five other people ended up actually PICKING her up, once she was shepherded into a large dog crate, to carry her down the sloping front yard to my waiting truck. The truck had a rubber mat on the floor, then lots of shavings & straw to pad the ride. Once at the truck, Daisy was tipped out and shut in.
Many thanks to Kim W. and her husband Roy for co-ordinating my adoption of Daisy and the actual extrication - I gather they have moved many pigs in their day and it couldn't have gone smoother!
Thanks also to Fred and his daughter Lesley and her family for entrusting Daisy to my care. I hope to do them proud in her rehabilitation. I am so eager to meet the busy, curious pig that I KNOW lurks beneath all that fat!
Once Daisy was loaded, we started the 4.5 hr journey home, stopping occasionally to check on her status. The truck remained cool, and Daisy seemed to have picked her spot (front right corner by the wheel well) and wasn't going to budge.
At home, we placed a ramp from the bumper of the truck to the floor of Daisy's new pen - but ultimately had to push her in an unladylike fashion down it, into her new home. Her new pen is about 20+ feet long, and 12 ft wide, separated into 4 small "bays" down one side (previously standing stalls for ponies, I believe). It is deep-bedded in shavings & straw.
For the first night, I fed Daisy some of her ration (Mazuri Elder - 1/2 cup), a flake of hay (I don't think she knows what it is!), and some water. She ate the food, sneered at the water (ours is sulphur-y), and plunked herself down for the night. Tuckered out, poor thing.
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