For many years my wife and I ran the Pigrest pig rescue here in Spalding.
I had a stroke five years ago and had to find homes for the remaining pigs we had and stop rescuing them.
However over the years we learned much about pet pigs and may be able to advise Carl and Michelle Repper regarding Jack.
Essentially uncastrated pigs will generally be a pain if kept as pets as they are noisy, smelly, bad tempered and tend to hump anything that they consider sexy (wheelie bins or footballs).
I am surprised that the animal welfare officer has not explained this to the owners. I have found them very helpful in the past.
I have seen similar situations where the animal had to be re-homed and in one case was euthanised.
Originally we lived in Birmingham and we bought a pet pig having little knowledge so you can image our horror when on the second day of our pig keeping experience our pig gave birth to several piglets.
This was in 1996 and I was lucky to have made contact with other pet pig keepers mostly in the USA.
The help and advice we got from these other keepers saved the day and was the beginning of a life long friendship with many.
We have since made many trips to the US to meet and stay with these ‘pig people’, some of them have large pig sanctuaries caring for hundreds of pigs both ex-pets and full size farm pigs.
Gren Owen
Spalding
