The Big Problem With Mini-Pigs
AnimalCare 
Oct 7, 2014 
AnimalCare, NGOs 
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We’ve highlighted once about this issue of mini-pigs (or teacup pigs). It’s, unfortunately, becoming a trend to keep mini-pigs as pets in quite a number of countries around the world.
Here’s the big problem with mini-pigs:
An article shared by Amanda: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140930-animals-culture-science-miniature-pigs-breeders-sanctuaries/
In 2012, as a favor to a friend, Canadians Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter adopted a three-pound (1.4-kilogram) “mini-pig” named Esther. Or so they thought. Within two years Esther wasn’t so mini. In fact, she weighed 500 pounds (227 kilograms).
“We didn’t want to believe it,” says Jenkins, “but at four months it became painfully obvious she would be larger than we thought. She grew about three-fourths of a pound a day. And she’s still growing now.”
Like thousands of others before them, Jenkins and Walter had been duped into thinking that their tiny pig would stay tiny—perhaps small enough to fit in a teacup—and make as good a house pet as any dog or cat.
But as the couple soon learned, those promises are essentially marketing ploys—ones that unscrupulous breeders have been using more and more frequently over the past 15-plus years. Since 1998, the number of “mini-pigs”—a catch-all term that characterizes just about any small-breed pig—in the United States and Canada has risen from 200,000 to perhaps as many as a million.
To keep the animals’ size down, many breeders have been inbreeding and underfeeding their pigs, telling buyers that piglets are actually adults, or—as in Esther’s case—passing off commercial pigs originally intended for food as a smaller breed of pig.
Most of these animals end up in overburdened shelters or are euthanized once they outgrow their suburban habitats.
Please click on the link to read more.
Physically or genetically modified animals suffer from various health problems and their chances of survival are grossly compromised.
Please do not support this practice.
Source: http://myanimalcare.org/2014/10/07/the-big-problem-with-mini..
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