Bob Harper: The Sensitive Guy
Every pig has a very different personality from every other pig, and Bob is no exception — although, when we first met him, we would have never known that under that silly and playful exterior, a sensitive pig was brewing. Thankfully, he landed in the right place for that! Farm Sanctuary sees all of these animals as individuals and works tirelessly to meet their individual needs.
Baby Bob Harper
This isn’t food silly – that is a piece of straw.
Sensitive guy
I love a little apple
Eeek- what is that
Scuse me chicken- just passing through
MMMMMMMMM Pumpkin
the long nose knows!
Bob and the beauty shot
Bob all grown up with his new pal Eric in the background. And his signature hairy ears!
It’s not often that you see anything too unusual while driving on a boring, busy highway, but every once in a while something will happen on a daily commute that cuts through the malaise and gives you pause. Such an event unfolded on an Illinois interstate one day, when a tiny pink piglet suddenly fell out of a transport truck and tumbled onto the ground right before a kind motorist’s eyes.
Piglet transport often ends with accidents, but also piglets who pop out of the holes in the trailers. (Photo Courtesy Dwayne Stone, Grenfell
Fire Chief)
Horrified by what he had just seen, the man hit the brakes and went out to get the piglet. And knowing that he could not keep a piglet who would grow into a large pig, he then called us.
A very sleepy, runny-eyed boy getting ready to start his adventures.
Like so many of the babies we rescue, when Bob Harper arrived he had health issues that were caused not only by the accident that brought him to us, but also by the way he was being raised in the meat industry. He was very sick with pneumonia and had wet, gurgly lung sounds. He also had external parasites, scrapes and bruising from his fall, and was not able to eat even a slurry feed. Our boy wanted the milk.
Starting to look bright after the first week of treatment.
Piglets like Bob are transported from farrowing houses, where they nurse from their mother or another mother (depending on the farm). Many farms are different, and piglets are removed anywhere from 10 days to three weeks of age and loaded up to be transported to a nursery barn, where they are then weaned and need to learn to eat a slurry food.
I do not get how people eat this stuff.
Like Bob, many piglets are not ready and refuse food, and at this stage — and every other stage of production — there are losses and some piglets die. Here at the sanctuary, we give them what they need to get through this age, and Bob needed milk and slowly an introduction to feed. And once he started on feed, there was nothing this boy would not eat.
Nom Nom Nom, I even like the seaweed
Little Bob making a nest, which you will see he continues to do as an adult.
He arrived soon after the rescue of his best friend as a piglet: Kim Gordon. Kim also fell off a transport truck at about the same age as Bob, and when they met they really hit it off — instantly becoming best pals.
Hole-digging with gal pal Kim!
“What was that?” Two pigs, Kim and Bob, at play in the pig barn pen pasture.
The two little pigs grew and grew and finally, when they were about four months old, they entered the main herd, but in a pen away from the others so they could acclimate. Kim seemed ready to go, but Bob was much more nervous around the big pigs, and although he enjoyed the huge space, he seemed like he never really fit with the big group.
Bob and gal pal Kim out in the big pig pasture.
He spent most of his time outdoors and loved the pond — he is the pig in the first shots of Farm Sanctuary in the film The Ghosts in our Machine, snorkeling through the water. At sleeping and feeding times, though, it was clear that our little guy was very low in the pig-herd hierarchy.
Loving the outdoors — Bob is growing up!
Bob is also very sensitive, and when his small stature meant that he was being picked on by some of the larger, more assertive pigs, he started having health issues. Wounds that would not heal, ulcers, fright reactions even to people, and other signs of his high stress level became apparent, and when even his best friend started to bully him, we knew that he had to be moved out of the big herd.
Named for Bob Harper, celebrity trainer from The Biggest Loser, Bob always lived up to his name and stayed a very svelte pig. He was always super active and really had a zest for life, but he was much smaller than most of the pigs in the herd.
A dark, sad time for Bob, when he lived alone in the pen he’d started out in with his best friend. But thankfully, there was hope on the horizon.
And sadly, but thankfully, another pig also had to be moved once Bob was gone. His new best pal and roommate Eric was also having some social issues with the herd and needed to live away from the others.
Happy snowflake eaters! Bob has a huge smile and a super cold pink nose while he and Eric chase the flakes.
Thankfully, both of these boys are at our sanctuary, where we really look at what the individual needs and don’t try to force them into a box that makes life easier for us. Having just one pig herd would be best for cleaning purposes, feeding purposes, staffing purposes — but is not always what is good for the individual pig.
Best friends even make the bed together. Building a nest with Bob and Eric.
And how is Bob now that he is just living with Eric? Well, he is spectacular of course! He still spends most of the day outside rooting, taking a mud bath, and enjoying the sun. He has a few scars from his time with the bigger pigs, but he is no longer frightened of people and runs up to the fence to greet his humanimal friends.
Snug as two bugs in a rug! Eric, left, and Bob, right, snuggled up in their warm nest of straw!
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