by, Kelly S.
I was sharing on Patreon a video of one of our aging pigs, Lucy. I was saying that because most farmed animals are killed as babies or very young for food, that getting care for older animals can be tricky because the training for vets doesn’t reach into the elderly farm animals' stages. So, I decided to look it up. I recently had someone reflect to me that if pigs stayed as cute as baby pigs, then people would be less likely to eat them … BUT in fact they ARE eating baby pigs. Farmed animals are killed from 1.5 months old to 3 years old generally. Pigs are killed around 6 weeks - right at that adorable stage so perhaps people just don’t realize this? I didn’t when I was eating meat 30 years ago, I didn’t have any relationship with what I was eating back then. Our farm friends live a VERY LONG TIME! Much longer than I expected to learn for some of them. These are number of years and depend on the breed of the animal and the conditions they live in: Horses: 25-30 years Chickens: 5-10 years Pigs: 15-20 years Cows: 15-20 years Ducks: 5-12 years Sheep: 10-12 years Goats: 15-18 years Turkeys: 10 years Rabbits: 8-12 years Llama: 20 years Alpaca: 20 years Seeing how long they live somehow gives more weight to their right to be here. They are meant to spend a lot of time on the earth. They matter. They are designed to spend years and years here with us living here.
This is Cisco. He lives at our sanctuary. He is 30 years old.
And our rescued pigs. We wish this type of day for all animals.