A pet pig whose weight ballooned to a massive 26st on a diet of biscuits and cola is now half the sow she was thanks to a Wirral animal sanctuary.
Portly Portia was so overweight she could barely move when she was taken into Whitegate Animal Sanctuary in Hoylake last summer, after spending seven years gorging on junk food in a Manchester flat. Thanks to an improved, pig-friendly diet and plenty of exercise in a field of her own, she now weighs a trim 9st 4lbs - a healthy weight for a pot-bellied pig.
Whitegate Animal Sanctuary founder Laura Whelan said: "Portia came to us last summer. She was living in someone's flat in as a house pig, being fed junk food, biscuits and Coca-Cola. She was morbidly obese. It was horrendous. I'd never seen an animal that fat. She could barely walk.
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"She was utterly depressed. She's a very clever pig, and she was trapped in a horrible flat with just a yard, not even any mud. By the time we got her she'd given up on life. Sometimes she wouldn't even get out of her bed for 48 hours - just a hard, plastic dog bed, and the blankets in the bed were horrendous, just old curtains. It was a miserable existence.
"By that time she'd already lost the use of one leg because of the pure weight on her. She was very nearly completely lame. We got her just in time and put her a normal pig diet or pig pellets, and fruit and vegetables.
"At first she was still huge and struggling to get up, and we had to assist her every time. She was in pain and she'd lash out and try to bite. Once she could get up and get mobile, the weight fell off her even more because she was exercising. Once she was up, there was no stopping her.
"She's amazing, she's very sassy, she has a proper piggy attitude. We have a pig field and, next to that, a cow field, and she will stand at the gate to shout at us to let her in. She knows when she wants to go.
"At tea time when she first arrived she was being bullied by the other pigs - they were eating her food because she wasn't quick enough. We started putting her in a little hut to eat, and now as soon as we arrive with the food she runs off to her hut and waits so she can eat in peace."
Laura, 41, set up the animal sanctuary five years ago to provide a safe haven for animals rescued from the meat and dairy industry. It is now home to around 150 pigs, cows, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys.
Laura said: "We have two commercial pigs. One was found on the side of the road next to a pig farm; she had escaped and crawled to the side of the road, and needed a new home.
"The chickens are all from egg laying farms. They often to come to us in a terrible state because there have been thousands packed into one barn. They're often bald with sparse feathers. Within a couple of months they've grown all their feathers back and are looking much better.
"Some farms can have 9,000 chickens in one barn and they can't all be rescued. We do our best to get as many as possible, but it's a matter of space and money.
"I've got two dairy farm male cows, which would have been put down, because they're no use to the industry. They're all grown up now.
"It's beautiful to see the animals. Half of them would be dead, should be dead. I think of what would have happened to them if they hadn't come to us."
She added that she hopes to one day purchase a farm of her own, as the sanctuary currently resides on rented land.
She said: "With renting, we feel like we could go at any time, and if we were asked to leave, there's very few places we could go with 150 animals. We'd love to get our own place someday. That's our end goal, for security, to keep the animals safe. "
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