What’s New

We wanted to celebrate Wilber’s 20th in style, so he had his own strawberry shortcake with candles. He was so excited! We just felt full of joy watching him. The next morning, he was the first one up licking out his bowl in case he missed any..

It has been so nice the last week or so, that we thought we would share some pictures with you taken around the ranch. The pigs with really bad arthritis are doing great. Yoshi comes out for breakfast every morning and suns himself outside in the late mornings and afteroons. Jazzmine honks it out all the way to the gravel pile every day too..

Megan turned 12 on October 27, 2007, and she has loved pigs since she was five years old. Actually, she has a big heart for all animals, bugs, worms, etc. The family lives in New Mexico and doesn't have the room for a real pig, so, for her birthday her parents gave her a sponsorship of Hammish. Her mom said she would be even more excited because she is helping a rescued animal. Megan wrote a wonderful story about her fantasy animal rescue, which you can read here.

Babe stopped eating the Thursday before Christmas. Ercell got an antibiotic in her and we force fed her a couple of times. One day she ate some warm oatmeal on her own and we got antibiotics in her sometimes. Dr. Meyers came out the day after Christmas. It turned out that she had the same aggressive cancer that her brother Arnold had. Dr. Meyers put her to sleep since there was no chance of her recovering and she was feeling so sick. It was really hard to lose her. She was a really sweet little pig.

Arnold had a tumor removed on October 7th, 2006. The report came back that the tumor was malignant. You can read the whole story, if you want. Warning! I will be posting pictures of the tumor and the pictures might be disturbing. Right now, he is not in pain, but as soon as he is, we will have the vet come out and help him cross the bridge. That story will be here also.

Zoe came through her spay with flying colors! Unfortunately, we scheduled the appointment for the hottest day ever. Zoe came home on Friday and Saturday the temps reached 114! The vet said Zoe couldn’t get wet for several days and we couldn't figure out how to keep her cool. Every time we put a little water in her bowl, she dumped it and rolled in the dirt and little puddle of mud the water made. We kept going out to dry her off and clean off the incision. Finally we got wet towels and put them on her. She was okay then, but very unhappy as you can see in the picture. We finally gave her back the pool on some clean cement Sunday so she could cool off proper. She was one happy pig with her pool back! We are just praying for cooler temps soon.

Very sadly we had to say good bye to Bonnie, Minnie Pearl, and Mi Bella Saturday, July 22, 2006. Bonnie was having such a hard time breathing with her Rhinitis that it was just too painful to watch anymore. She was a dear, sweet pig with a gentle personality. Minnie Pearl arrived weighing probably 300 pounds or more. She had been fed fried tortillas at the nursing home where she was living. She lost at least 100 pounds while she was here and did much better that we could have hoped. We have had her since 1992 and she had a great life with us. She became very arthritic and just couldn't get around anymore, in spite of the Rimidal we were giving her twice a day. She was about 15 years old and her quality of life so poor, that we made the decision to have her put to sleep.

Mi Bella was a sweetheart from the San Louis Obispo Shelter. She did great in spite of a large underbite and was happy with us. She developed an ovarian tumor recently and had stopped eating by Saturday. Ovarian tumors are so common in females that we really encourage everyone to have their females spayed if at all possible. Mi Bella had Rhinites and bad breathing problems, making surgery a great risk.

Losing three pigs in one say was especially difficult and it is really hard to watch our herd get older.

Zoe surprises us every day. As it turns out, she just loves Big Al and Joe Big. Big Al is not sure what to make of her, but Joe Big is clearly smitten. Maybe she reminds him of his little girl friend, Snickers. Storm was unimpressed with Zoe, but let her check him out. The real surprise came when Cathy was out playing ball with Lady and Zoe took off after the ball with Lady like a shot! She and Lady arrived at the ball at the same time, even though Lady has long legs and Zoe has short piggy legs. We aren’t sure if it is the ball she is after, or Lady. She ran after the ball with Lady until they were both too tired to chase it. We are going to try to get a picture soon.

Ashley needed to do a sophmore community service project for school and wanted to work with animals since she wants to be a veterinarian. We are very happy that she picked Belly Draggers Ranch to do her project. She came out at 8:00 in the morning on Saturday, 1/7/06, and helped us feed the pigs breakfast. She was surprised at how friendly all the pigs were. This was the first time she had been on a farm and was happy to hear roosters in the neighboring yards.

After that, she went right to work raking up the pine needles - and there were a lot of them! We have two huge pine trees and there were needles everywhere. Then we put ointment on Hannah, who has a rash on her legs. Hannah was so happy to have the attention, that she fell right over for a belly rub. Finally, Ashley swept off all the rubber mats and helped change all the water bowls. Ashley worked so hard; she never even took a break. Not only that, but she was so pleasant and a joy to be around! It was really a treat for us to have her here today! We are hoping she will want to come back and help us again some time in the future. She is planning to come out when our vet comes out so she can assist him and learn what large animal vets do. Thank you for everything, Ashley!

The Senior Aerobics Class in Morgan Hill has been sponsoring Buttons. After the class a couple of Wednesday's ago, everyone came out to visit Belly Draggers and see their pig. He loved all the attention and was a perfect gentleman. After spending quite a bit of time with him, the group moved on to meet the rest of the pig gang.

After sponsoring Big Al for several years, Sterling and Carole came out to visit him. They brought bags and bags of apples, boxes of blueberry newtons, and jars of peanut butter for all the pigs. Big Al got the most attention and he felt very special, but all the pigs were thrilled with the attention and treats! Thank you Sterling and Carol for making the day special for everyone!

Dee and Larry Petro adopted Lacy-Mae from us this summer. The family and their other pig Gwennie moved to Redding recently. The following is a cute story that Dee sent to Eva in an email:

Okay here is one for you, Cathy and Ercell to chuckle about. Mind you Larry brought the hay/shavings from Gwen and Lacy’s houses up from Gilroy so they would not have new smells on top of everything else. Now keep in mind we moved here on the 11th of December. Now for the interesting part. Wednesday night and this morning I found a brown egg in Gwennie’s hay in her house! I thought the first one was a flook, but to find one this morning? We don’t see any chickens around here and we didn't bring any, and I know the duck is a boy soooo????? Could there really be an Easter Pig? If I cracked one open would I find that "flying pig"?

This is Pot-Belly Acres signing off.

Love Dee, Gwen and Lacy Mae

When Eddie first got here, he was so overweight that he only got up to eat, potty and go back to bed. As you can imagine, that didn’t help his diet and exercise program much. We put him on Syn–flex^© and that has made a huge difference! He’s been here now a couple of years and has lost weight and is taking an interest in his surroundings and the other pigs. Within the last couple of weeks, Eddie decided he was going to be Ercell’s helper in the barn. Whenever Ercell is in there working, there’s Eddie, ready to hand him a hammer or whatever. In this picture, he’s resting after all his hard work.