RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT/Gray News) – There’s no party like a piggy party, and one farm in Virginia threw one to mark the milestone birthdays of a few of its own pigs.
The staff at Henrico’s Meadow Farm at Crump Park said they could not resist “hamming” it up this Thanksgiving by throwing a first birthday bash for their four piglets.
At 1 year old, each of the piglets now weighs more than 200 pounds. But they started out very small as a surprise litter from Gertie, the newest pig of the farm, last year.
“It was about two weeks after she (Gertie) came here that she gave birth, so that was kind of a surprise for us,” Meadow Farm Senior Animal Care Specialist Emilee Orndorff said. “She had nine piglets. One was a stillborn, unfortunately.”
The staff said they wanted to celebrate the significant milestone Tuesday.
Special cakes were made for the birthday boys by Meadow Farm Animal Care Specialist Katie Kemp.
The cakes were then given to each of the piglets, named Archie, Iggy, Ducky and Otis.
“Made out of bananas, peanut butter, coconut oil, oats and scrambled eggs. Blended most of them together except for the scrambled eggs,” Kemp said. “The eggs are just the topping. And I then froze it all so it stays together.”
“I can’t lie that I haven’t, like, tried pieces of it as I was trying to figure out how to make it yesterday. It’s not bad,” Kemp said.
Orndorff, who has cared for the pigs since birth, said they all have unique personalities.
“Our dark black pig out in the pasture there, he’s going to be the top of the four brothers,” Orndorff said, describing Archie.
She said Iggy is known as the tough guy.
“He’s the muscle of the group,” Orndorff said. “And he’s got a really easy-going personality, very independent thinker.”
Meanwhile, Ducky is the clown.
“Ducky is a nickname from when he was born because his oinks sounded more like a duck, and it just stuck,” Orndorff said.
And Otis, who was born the runt, is the comeback kid.
“He gets along so well with his brothers despite being raised separately from them for about two months,” Orndorff said
.In the beginning, Otis needed a lot of extra care, often going home with Henrico County Division of Recreation and Parks’ Manager of Zoology, Jim Weinpress.
“We celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s with this piglet in a playpen in our living room,” Weinpress said. “And every day I’d go to work, he’d get in his travel container, and we’d go to work together. So yeah, he was my best buddy for a while.”
The piglets’ mother, Gertie, gave birth to them during Thanksgiving week 2023.
“Gertie wasn’t producing milk. She tried, but she just wasn’t producing anything, and we realized pretty quickly that we had to intervene if these piglets were gonna make it,” Weinpress said.
Meadow Farm staff cared for the tiny babies around the clock, bottle-fed them, and kept detailed records of their nutrition intake and growth.
They were so small initially that they had to be weighed on a food scale.
Half of the eight piglets were rehomed.
“Two of their siblings, two brothers, went down to Henricus Historical Park down in Chesterfield,” Orndorff said. “And then their two sisters went up to Roger William Park Zoo in Rhode Island.”
The remaining four brothers will live the rest of their lives at Meadow Farm.
“To see them grow up and be able to live independently from us is the hallmark of what we wanted as an animal care team,” Orndorff said.
“Under human care, Ossabaw [Island hogs] can live 15 to 20 years. So we’re celebrating their first birthday, but they have a very long life ahead of them,” Weinpress said.
Anyone can visit the pigs during regular park hours.
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