piglet physical therapy

This little girl piglet got her head stepped on by mom and a big piece of skin ripped off her shoulder.  So to give her a good chance of making it to adulthood we took her home and stitched her up.  It's not really economic to do this, but I hate to see a little animal go, and she's doing fine.   Normally piglets of this size are running around after mom making what I call the booby squeal -- "lay down!  I want to nurse!  lay down mom!!" and so on.  So what we're doing here is getting the piglet to exercise the bruised muscles and bring some tone back.  This is the first time this piglet has been on a treadmill.  they learn REALLY quickly that the treadmill means food and running, and pretty soon she'll be hopping up there when its feeding time, squealing her impatience. 

After she's got the hang of it a little better, we'll move the bottle behind the mesh at the head.  she still gets to drink, but has to stay up towards the top of the treadmill.  We use this treadmill for all of the animals at the house.