Farmer Finds His Rare Pigs Killed

A North Stonington farmer wants to know who killed two of his rare pigs. He found them dead over the weekend and believes it was no accident.

"This was not fast and it was horrible to see. These guys fought like crazy against something," Dugan Tillman-Brown, co-owner of the family-owned FireFly Farms said.

Now he's fighting to find the people responsible for slaughtering two of his rare pigs.

Tillman-Brown said the pigs are called mulefoots. There are only 1,000 of them in the world and you cannot get them at your average livestock auction.

He found them early Saturday morning. His mom noticed the fence was down in the piglet pasture and saw black lumps in the back. That's when he made the discovery.

"The only blood on these animals came out of their nose and mouth because they were screaming for so long and so hard like a horse that founders, they frothed blood," said Tillman-Brown.

The pigs did not fear people and would go up to anyone who entered the pen.

"The state of the animals was rather horrific," Tillman-Brown said.

North Stonington's first selectman said police told him the animals got tangled up in the fence but he didn't say what they died of.

"There's no way any animal would've jumped over the fence and then done that to those pigs. Somebody might tell you it was a bear," said Craig Floyd, Connecticut's only humane farmer and owner of Footsteps Farm.

Tillman-Brown said there were no signs that the pigs were electrocuted and the fence isn't powerful enough to do that.

"It is meant as a psychological barrier, not a physical barrier," Tillman-Brown said. "There's not an animal in the world that would've jumped the fence to go after them and wrap them up and then left them alone."

Tillman-Brown says a tractor and other fencing have been stolen from the farm and pigs have been mysteriously let out lately.

Now he wants to know who slaughtered these valuable animals, which would run for nearly $10 per pound.

"So we're looking at a $3,000 animal, minimum, so $6,000 between the two of them," Tillman-Brown said.

This is the second case of extreme animal abuse in North Stonington this year.

In February, two cows were shot and one of them had to be euthanized.

Tillman-Brown doesn't think that case is connected to his pigs.

The Connecticut Department of Agriculture will investigate this most recent incident.