Catch up with what’s happening on Essex Farm with an update from Kristin Kimball:

“Pancake the piglet has gone from flat to fat this week. (Thank you, Miranda and Kate, for that evocative phrase.) We’ve been feeding him cow colostrum, which is denser than cow milk, and contains far more protein and fat. It’s not exactly the same as sow’s milk, but apparently it is close enough. Pancake gets fed with a dosing syringe four or five times a day, spends daytime hours rooting around in the aisle of the greenhouse, and cold nights tucked in a tub of hay, under a heat lamp, with the chickens.

He is one social pig. When Mary enters the greenhouse he stands on his hind legs and pushes his snout into her fur. He has sharp little needle teeth and when he is very hungry (which is pretty much always – he is a growing pig) he digs them into her ruff and hangs there, grunting. Mary has become less avid about mothering him as he has grown bigger, but she still cleans his face assiduously after feeding. He must be a very confused boy: born to a sow, saved by children, mothered by a dog, and surrounded by chickens. But identity issues aside, he is a pretty content little porker.

Mark is quick to point out that farmers really can’t do things like this, or at least not very often. Time and attention spent on Pancake are taken from other things. The needs of the farm as a whole must trump those of one small orphan. This is not heartless, it is utilitarian. It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong, if I remember my Jeremy Bentham. But sometimes there is a little budget for clemency. And it always feels so good….” Continue reading this Essex Farm Note.

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