Someone Surrendered a Potbellied Pig to You — Here's the Intake That Sets It Up to Stay Placed

The story is almost always the same. Somebody bought a "teacup," "micro," or "mini" pig, believing it would top out around the size of a small dog. It didn't. It grew — and pigs keep growing for years, sometimes not reaching full adult size until age five.¹ By the time it lands with you it's a 100-plus-pound animal that roots up the yard, screams when it doesn't get its way, may be technically illegal where the owner lives, and has usually been fed the wrong food for its entire life. Most rescues take one look and hesitate, because a pig doesn't fit the protocols you wrote for dogs and cats. It carries a couple of parasites so common they practically define pig surrender, it's legally livestock no matter how small the breeder claimed it would stay, and it can live 12 to 20 years² — which means a bad placement is a very long mistake. Here's the intake that keeps a surrendered pig healthy and, just as important, keeps it from bouncing back to you.

Start With the Legal Question, Not the Medical One

This is the part rescues skip, and it's the reason so many pigs get surrendered twice. Pigs are classified as livestock by species. A 50-pound potbellied pig sits in the same legal category as a 700-pound farm hog, and the marketing words "teacup" and "micro" carry zero legal weight.³ Many municipalities either ban pigs from residential zones outright or allow them only under a specific weight cap — often somewhere between 75 and 150 pounds — and an owner whose pig grows past that limit can be forced to rehome it.⁴ That weight cap is one of the most common reasons a pig ends up with you in the first place.

So before you think about adoption, find out what the rules are in your area and in any area you'd place a pig into. A pig you adopt into a household that isn't zoned for it will be back within the year. Write the zoning status into the animal's record along with everything else, because the next adopter needs to know it too.

Quarantine — and Assume Mange Until Proven Otherwise

If you have other pigs, the new one does not meet them yet. The standard guidance is to quarantine a new or returning pig for at least 30 days — some sources say a minimum of three to four weeks — in a separate space with separate handling, and to run skin scrapings before you integrate.⁵ That window isn't bureaucratic caution. It's specifically how you catch the single most common problem in surrendered pigs.

Sarcoptic mange, caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei var. suis, is highly contagious and especially prevalent in pet pigs that previously lived with other pigs — exactly the profile of a surrender.⁶ It shows up as intense itching, crusty skin (often starting around the ears), and hair loss, and it spreads readily to your resident pigs if you skip the isolation step. Have your vet take a skin scraping during the intake exam and treat if indicated. Because the mite's life cycle runs about 10 to 15 days,⁶ one dose is rarely enough — plan on a repeat treatment on your vet's schedule, and don't lift quarantine on the strength of a single clean day.

The Intake Vet Visit: What Actually Needs to Happen

A surrendered pig almost never comes with usable records, so treat the first vet visit as a full reset. A proper intake exam for a potbellied pig should include a fecal check for internal parasites and deworming as needed, a skin scraping and treatment for mange mites, any vaccinations the pig is due for, and a trim of the hooves and tusks.⁷ Pigs should be dewormed at least once a year regardless, and injectable ivermectin is the workhorse product for both worms and mites.⁸

Two grooming tasks tend to get ignored until they become emergencies. Hooves that aren't worn down on abrasive surfaces overgrow and crack, and untreated they cause lameness, discomfort, and in bad cases abscesses; plan on trimming at least twice a year.⁹ Tusks matter mostly in intact and older males — they keep growing, get sharp, and become a genuine injury risk to people and other animals, so they should be trimmed by a vet at least annually.¹⁰ Neither is something you can eyeball and put off; build both into the intake and then onto a schedule.

While you're at it, ask the vet about spay or neuter status. Intact pigs are harder to place, more prone to certain health problems, and males develop those tusks faster. An unaltered surrender is a strong candidate for surgery before adoption.

Fix the Diet, Because It's Almost Always Wrong

Most surrendered pigs arrive overweight, underweight, or malnourished in a way that doesn't show on the scale — the result of being fed dog food, table scraps, or free-choice everything. Pigs are prone to obesity and to arthritis that obesity makes worse, and the fix is a species-appropriate diet: a formulated potbellied-pig feed that provides the right nutrient balance, measured to the individual animal rather than left out all day.¹¹ Don't try to correct a very over- or underweight pig overnight; set a target with your vet and adjust gradually. A pig's body condition is one of the clearest signals of whether its last home understood what it was doing, and it's one of the first things a good adopter will ask about.

Plan for Companionship and Enrichment From Day One

Pigs are intelligent, social animals. Many surrenders were kept as the only pig in a home that couldn't meet their need for stimulation, and a bored pig is a destructive, vocal, difficult-to-place pig. You won't introduce a new arrival to your other pigs until quarantine is over, but you should be planning for it — and planning for how the eventual adopter will provide company and mental exercise, whether that's another pig, structured outdoor time, or rooting and foraging enrichment. A pig that has somewhere to root and something to think about is a pig that behaves well enough to keep.

Write It All Down — This Is Where a Bounce Gets Prevented

Everything above only helps the pig if it survives past this one intake. Surrendered pigs move between homes and rescues more than most species, and every time the paper trail resets, the next caretaker starts from zero: re-deworming a pig that was just done, missing a mange treatment mid-course, or placing a pig into a home where it's over the legal weight limit.

Keep a single record for each pig that travels with it: intake date and weight, zoning status, mange scraping results and treatment dates, deworming dates and product, hoof and tusk trim dates, vaccination history, spay/neuter status, and diet plan. A tool like Pawsies is built for exactly this kind of per-animal history — but a shared document works too, as long as it exists and moves with the pig. The point isn't the software. The point is that the next person who cares for this animal, whether that's a foster next month or an adopter next year, can pick up your intake instead of guessing at it. That's the difference between a pig you placed once and a pig you place for good.

Have a pig intake protocol that works for your rescue? We'd love to hear what you've learned. This guide is general information, not veterinary advice — always work with a vet experienced in potbellied pigs for diagnosis, medication, and dosing.