'They're just as affectionate as dogs' - Singer swaps stage for saving pigs in Kildare

My Little Pig rescue in Kildare is Ireland's only pig rescue and has a total of 140 pigs and piglets on site.

The rescue coincides with My Lovely Horse rescue which was co-founded by Martina Kenny, her sister Deborah Kenny and the manager of My Little Pig rescue, singer Cathy Davey.

Cathy, in an exclusive interview, said that the pig rescue is seriously struggling financially and is seeing more and more animals in need with nowhere to go every year.

"Our vet bills are enormous....and in the last few months, we've been struggling to pay off those vet bills simply because people and the public are calling and demanding on help for the animals.

"There isn't the support from the government to provide the help or enforce the laws that would protect them.....we're under a lot of pressure and that's putting it lightly.

"We are looking for help from the public to be able to provide emergency services that are lacking in the country".

Most recently, a pig rescue mission has added thousands of euro to the rescue's already sky high vet bills.

A brother and sister duo turned into an inbred family of six piglets with more on the way this Christmas.

"The owner of the pigs had dumped them with one of their neighbours and said they'd be back for them. And the neighbours were very kind, looked after the pigs, but the original owners never came back to them," Cathy explained.

"And then suddenly they had a pregnant female who's very young, who was pregnant by her brother. So that pig had six piglets, and they were all inbred. So there's health problems that happen from that.

"And one of those piglets had a deformed leg. And we were notified about this family when the piglets were about six months. So they were all fertile by the time we got them. So we collected the pigs. Mom was already pregnant again by her brother.

"Her name is Jill. And the piglets, thankfully, were just coming into heat. So they weren't pregnant, but the brothers were already trying to mate with them.

"And the little girl with the deformed leg, luckily she's very small. So we're working to get her a prosthetic leg fitted. She doesn't need it all of the time, just some of the time. She's very able. She's doing everything that her brothers and sisters do, which is important to say.

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"But with that one family, we now have to get five girls spayed, which is about €500 per pig. We have to get three boys neutered. Then we'll have to get the mom through her pregnancy and through her delivery at Christmas time, so right in the middle of winter, when they shouldn't be having piglets.

"And then when those piglets are born, we're going to have to get those boys and girls spayed again. So just with one single rescue, we can exemplify the exact problem that's going on.

"And now we have this huge family with huge expense coming into Christmas with vet bills already exceeding what we can pay.

Going back to the beginning Cathy said she was first a touring musician before she became a full-time animal rescue manager.

Cathy met her husband, fellow musician Neil Hannon, while they were both touring and they both ended up moving to the countryside in Kildare which was when Cathy had started My Lovely Horse Rescue with two other co-founders, Martina Kenny and her sister Deborah Kenny.

"We started rescuing dogs in Dublin with different rescues and then we came together to help horses because there was a horse crisis in 2010, so 15 years ago. And then slowly we all kind of gave up our lives to start a rescue of our own because we found that we couldn't get animals rescued via the existing rescues.

"There just wasn't the help that animals needed, so we set up My Lovely Horse Rescue based on my husband's song he wrote for Father Ted, which is My Lovely Horse," Cathy said.

Cathy said that within a few months they had around 25 horses who were all unwanted or abandoned and they started working with local authorities and realised that they needed to get a farm of their own because the demand was so high for horses to be rescued.

"We found a farm in Kildare that we were able to rent eventually. We also found another farm where me and my husband moved to, which is where we now have My Lovely Pig Rescue, which is under the umbrella of My Lovely Horse Animal Rescue".

Cathy explained that the farm that her and her husband live on has 170 animals with a team of about 18 volunteers.

"We focus on pigs.....we do like to focus on food animals, so we have sheep and goats as well. But 140 pigs is the
largest number of animals here and we're Ireland's only pig rescue. We still have some equines, donkeys and ponies, but our focus is on pigs".

"There's a lot of people breeding pigs for pets or for food and selling them for both those things. So they'll be sold online as a pet or for food. I don't know if anyone else would be comfortable with other animals being sold for either pets or for food, but that's the way it is with pigs because people eat pigs.

"A lot of people will buy pigs thinking that they're easy to keep, which they're not. And they won't give them the care that they need. And then the pigs develop behavioural problems and people find that the pigs are too much for them to look after.

"Historically in Ireland there's been nowhere for pigs to go to. There's only other people who will take the pigs to eat them. So what you have around the country is a lot of pigs who've been brought up as pets in the house and then are sold to people who will butcher them in their garden."

A day in the life for Cathy and her team on the pig farm is nothing short of constant care around the clock for animals on the site. With two daily feeds, keeping the pigs entertained, giving them the medical attention they require and putting them all to bed every night, the job never stops.

Medicating the pigs alone takes about an hour and a half for the core team to do everyday.

Keeping the pigs entertained and making sure they don't get bored is quite simple but very important, as Cathy explains.

"Basically all a pig wants is to be able to go outside and forage for food. So their whole instincts revolve around looking for
something and finding it. That's all they want to do with their day. So that's where behavioural problems will occur. If they
don't get to fulfil their natural instincts, then they become grumpy with other pigs and with you.

"So what we'll do is we'll provide them with treat bowls where they have to roll the bowl around and there will be food inside it. So they're kept entertained with that if they're indoors. But when they're outside, they'll be given what we call enrichment, which is some form of sweet hay with a grain sprinkled on top of it.

When Cathy was asked 'why should people care about pigs? or why does the rescue focus so much on pigs?' she said: 

"I'm baffled why more people don't care. I think historically they have been deemed animals who aren't as important as other animals, so that our conscience lets us do horrible things to them.

"Because in order to produce the amount of pig meat that you need to be able to sell it in every garage and in every shop as just a thoughtless breakfast, those pigs all need to be somewhere.

"It's millions of pigs that need to be bred. So I think in order for people to not feel guilty, they have to allow themselves to think that they're less than dogs. But anyone who's alive has heard that pigs are more intelligent than dogs, and that's a fact, that's true.

"They're also just as loving and affectionate as dogs. That's why all of us work, that's why there's 18 volunteers living on site, working in the hail, wind and snow to help these animals, because they come here and they see how cuddly they are, how the pigs recognise people.

"Once they get to know them, they recognise them, come running to their name. They want to lie down beside you and snuggle, just like dogs. So for me, it's a no-brainer".

Another rescue case Cathy explained was a beautiful big pig called Legend, who was shot in the face.

"He has to be hand-fed...they missed his brain but they blew out all of his teeth....they aimed very badly, whatever they did".

Pictured below is Legend getting fed by volunteer Andre.

Cathy said that "people come here and they're like, 'why don't you just like send them to slaughter?' And the only answer I can think of is, 'if you went to a dog rescue, would you say that to them?' Like, what is the difference between a dog and a pig?

"Really, like we eat one and we love the other, but there isn't really a good enough reason when you really think about it to have that distinction between them. It's only because the distinction exists in our heads. But I would love people to just have a think about that. 

"Because they're meant to be roaming and having lives of their own and not being bred and sold for meat or fun."

Cathy said that people are welcome to get in touch via the My Lovely Horse Rescue website if they are interested in volunteering, adopting a pig or donating to the rescue.

You can also get in touch via Instagram and Facebook And we have an email there that they can just say they're interested in
volunteering.