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," said Dugan Tillman-Brown, co-owner of Firefly Farms.
Now he's fighting to find the people responsible for the slaughtering of two of his rare pigs. Tillman Brown says they're called mulefoots and there are only 1000 of them in the world. They're not something you can get at your average livestock auction.
"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.
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 state of the animals was rather horrific," said Tillman-Brown. "These guys come up to anyone who comes in the pen. They're not afraid."
He also says there were no signs the pigs were electrocuted, adding that 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 wrapped them up and then left them alone. If it was a coyote, if it was a cougar."
North Stonington's first selectman says 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 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 says he's had a tractor and other fencing stolen from the farm and pigs have been mysteriously let out of late. Now he wants to know who slaughtered these valuable animals, ones that would run for nearly $10 per pound.
"So we're looking at $3000 animal minimum so $6000 between the two of them," said Tillman-Brown.
In February two cows were shot in North Stonington and one of them had to be euthanized. Tillman-Brown doesn't think that's connected to his pigs. But the Connecticut Department of Agriculture says it will investigate this most recent incident.
