The love between a mother and her child is undoubtedly the most powerful force on Earth. For a pig named Matilda, a mother’s love knows no bounds. In an unprecedented story, a pregnant pig escaped from a factory farm to safely birth to her babies.
For a pig named Matilda, a mother’s love knows no bounds. Born on a factory farm, the pregnant pig knew what fate awaited her babies. Pigs can naturally live for 15 to 20 years, but unless the farmer kept them for ʙʀᴇᴇᴅing, her babies wouldn’t last past six months.
Matilda’s instincts told her it was time to ᴇsᴄᴀᴘᴇ and find a safe place to give birth — so she did.
Anna Aston, 49, who discovered the mum and her babies – now known as the Ollerton 11 – said: ‘I was just walking near the woods on Monday evening when I heard something in the hedges which I knew immediately was quite big.
” I thought maybe it was another dog or a badger and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this pig and her piglets rustling around in the undergrowth. I knew they weren’t wild boars; they just looked like ordinary pigs, which I thought wasn’t normal.
‘I walked on but couldn’t get these pigs out of my mind and I was worried for their sᴀfᴇᴛʏ. ‘I didn’t realize there is a pig farm nearby and she must have escaped from there. It’s incredible really that she went to such lengths to protect her babies
“We visited the follᴏwing day to check it out and found she had escaped from an adjacent pig farm and had her babies in the woods,” Beresford told. “Her babies looked well, [but] she was thin and able to graze but not forage for food as she had a ring thʀᴏᴜɢʜ her nose.”
Unfortunately, keeping Matilda safe wasn’t going to be an easy task.
“She had the ᴍᴀᴛᴇrnal drive to ᴇsᴄᴀᴘᴇ and save her babies — we could not let her go back,” Beresford said. “But we couldn’t just collect them. How could we save them? Ultimately, we needed the consent of the owners.”
Worried that the family might be lost forever, Beresford organized a protest and soon received a call from the farmers agreeing to ʀᴇʟɪɴǫᴜɪsʜ Matilda and her babies. Now, Matilda and her family are living comfortably at Brinsley Animal Rescue, grᴏwing stronger by the day.
