Charlotte narrowly escaped death after being born on a pig farm, she is now living her life happily at Little Oak Sanctuary.
Charlotte was born in early September 2018 on a pig farm near Inverell. The pig farmer was shutting down his business and was trying to get rid of the last of his pigs. A man visiting family came across this situation and as the farmer suggested the piglets’ throats were to be slit if no-one took them, he took one piglet back to his fathers rental property in an inner Sydney suburb.
Although he had the best of intentions, the young man was poorly equipped to cope with a very young, vulnerable piglet, poor Charlotte did not receive the best of care. Left in the rain with nowhere to escape from the wet and fed inappropriate food, she soon developed a chest and skin infection. The family sought vet care for her but many inner city vets would not treat her, until they finally found one who would. After a week of treatment Charlotte’s skin has largely recovered with only the tail end of her skin condition remaining (hence the soothing cream on her skin), but further treatment of her chest will require another course of antibiotics.
As Charlotte is the breed of pig used in commercial pig farming, she is likely to grow into a very big girl, around 250kg or so, but even on arrival at less than 6 kilograms her personality already shone through. She knows what she wants and it often involves a lap.