Collecting Our Two New Kune Kune Piglets
Monday, March 3rd, 2008After a long wait we have finally managed to collect our two rescue piglets from the Scottish SPCA rescue shelter in Balerno, Scotland after coming across them in a Google alert. The poor young piglets, part of a litter of seven, had been waiting for several 
weeks for us to be able to collect them, as the RSPCA had delayed doing an assessment of our facilities to approve us to have the pigs.
It was a long drive to collect them as the shelter is almost two hundred miles off so we went up the night before and stayed at a friend’s. The next morning, armed with a large wire meshed dog crate and a bag of straw for bedding, we set off with excitement but also a little trepidation, as we didn’t know exactly what size piglets to expect or how they would cope with a 200 hundred mile car journey!
The wait for the piglets turned out even longer than expected as we had some difficulty finding the rescue centre and we went round in circles, albeit in some lovely Scottish countryside, before asking a local farmer who pointed us in the right direction. At long last we got there and one of the staff welcomed us and said “would you like to see the piglets the then?” - would we? Too 
right we would! Although, before actually meeting our piglets we were taken to meet the parents. The parents had been part of a circus petting zoo before their rescue and the piglet’s mother is a pretty pink-with-black-spots Kune Kune sow named Fiona. Their father is a black pot bellied boar called Shrek, a real handsome chap. The litter of piglets were all either all black like their father or pink with back spots like the mother.
Then the wait was finally over and we went to see our piglets. They were in a brick outhouse with a walled off concreted yard and the first we saw of them was their little black snouts poking up out from some straw. They look gorgeous but a little apprehensive 
as they had just had their ears tagged that morning, which were probably still a little tender and I’m sure they were thinking “Oh no, what are they going to do to us now?” Our first impression was that they were much smaller than we had expected but they looked really cute and gorgeous. Now we were sure that the dog crate that we had bought specially was more than big enough for them. In fact, they were going to look a little lost in it. After meeting them and taking some pics and videos we had to go off to the office and complete all of the paperwork. This involved giving our DEFRA holding numbers and there is a pig transportation form that has to be completed when pigs are moved, we had brought this with us. With the boring bit out of the way it was off to load up our piglets.
This was when the squealing began, as soon as one of the staff tried to catch the piglets they both squealed like banshees. The first piglet stopped squealing as soon as she was caught but the other piglet squealed at the top of her voice all the way to the car. As soon as they got in the car they settled instantly and just tried to bury themselves under a pile of straw. So off we set on the long journey home. Before very long before it became clear that one of the piglets had had a bowel evacuation…what a smell!! This is not a smell that you want to experience at too close range, like cooped up in a car! With the windows all lowered 
and sun roof open we proceeded and then one of the piglets must have become car sick as it started to go the way a dog does just before it vomits and sure enough, proceeded to empty its stomach contents as well as its bowel. You can imagine how the car smelled by now! We had to make a stop and throw in a lot more straw which neutralised the smell to some extent and then called for an emergency care air freshener.
The rest of the journey proceeded without incident, apart when we stopped for a break and a snack which we ate in the car, to keep an eye on the pigs, and with the smell we nearly joined the pigs in throwing up!
Anyway, finally we arrived home with the two gorgeous piglets intact and we introduced them to their new home. While they are so small we are keeping them in our dog run which is ideal having an indoor sheltered area and an outdoor grass run. They seem to like it although are more than a little timid at the moment, it seems they are pigs by name and guinea pigs by nature! But we’re sure our piglets will soon become tame.
You can see a little video of us collecting the piglets below.
John
