Feeding Time

Today, Lodo the pig was eating again. Yesterday, he wasn’t. A pig refusing food is a pig with something wrong.

At dinner last night, everyone got up to eat except Lodo. He was half-immersed in a mud pond and sound asleep. I walked over to wake him up. He stood, but then walked to the barn, not the feed area. I brought in a bowl of produce and he turned away, digging in the straw with his front hoof, making a bed.

Nothing was comfortable, though. He’d tremble as he started to lay down, then straighten up and start the bed-making over again.

All of the black and white Hampshire pigs are 11 this year—ancient in pig years.

I go and get some bread from the med center, warm it up in the microwave and put it under Lodo’s nose. Pigs love bread. Lodo doesn’t move. He’s made a bed now and is lying in it. Dawnell takes his temperature and it’s a degree below normal. Not frightening, but still off.

I leave the barn to feed out hay to the goats. When I come back, Louie is laying right next to Lodo. All of the other pigs are out at dinner still, but Louie and Lodo are nose to nose (Louie on the left, Lodo on the right).

Jenny says to give Lodo a beer—it’s an old trick that Susie, the Animal Care Director at Farm Sanctuary uses to stimulate a pig’s appetite. She gives me a can of Modelo. I lift up one side of Logo’s lip and pour in the beer by his tusk. Most of it runs into the straw, but he swallows some, not raising his head.

Later, I bring in 2 hard-boiled eggs, and 4 pieces of bread. Lodo eats both the eggs and Louis sniffs. Then I give him the bread, Zach comes in, noses Louie out of the way and bites Lodo on the shoulder as he chews the breads. All three of them get up in a cloud of dust and it’s the normal mayhem that’s the result of the combination of pigs and food.

It’s evening and time to leave, time to let beer and eggs and sleep do the work.

And today, Lodo is eating. But we all notice suddenly how much weight he’s lost over the last few months. It’s like looking at your dad and suddenly seeing that he’s old.

At the tail end of the pigs’ dinner, I see Lodo licking out a trough, alone. I toss him some bagels from tomorrow’s breakfast. He eats one and walks right past the others.

“What about the famous pig sense of smell?” I say.

He backs up and sniffs out another bagel. I go in and hand-feed him the rest.

He’s not trembling, he's up and he’s eating, even if his nose can’t find everything. Standing beside him, I feel like I’m Lodo and he’s my Louie and being next to each other is enough.