That’ll Be All, Pig

With the recent patches that added 10,000 new animals to the server, I was able to find a whole bunch of different animals. Bulls, cows, pheasants, bison were all abundant. I even found a rooster, but still haven't seen a hen unfortunately. One animal that I wanted to try raising, was a pig, and I was able to find a few.

Pigs are pretty good animals for a couple of things – they are easy to tame and they eat almost anything. Because of these two facts, they are one of the best animals to skill up your animal taming skill at low levels. Or so I've been told…I managed, without much effort, to find 3 pigs. One male and 2 females. I figured this would be the perfect setup to start breeding and learning animal husbandry and taming. But the best laid plans often run into unforeseen problems in Wurm.

Day One

I'm not really sure how much it matters, but I made sure my pigs were well fed and groomed, then set about getting them to breed…they were not going to have any part of it the first day – 5 different tries, and none of them were interested. I did gain some skill at least, but no pregnancies.

Day Two

Day two started with a shock. One of my female pigs had died overnight for some unknown reason. I am certain she was not diseased when I logged off, and I fed her plenty. I even left a pile of meat for her to chow down on overnight. But she was gone. So I said a prayer to Fo, made some bacon, and buried her so the other two pigs might feel better about breeding. The memory of their friend was too strong. Feeding (I must say pigs eat a lot) and grooming made no difference, they were not interested in procreating. So I let them have a time of mourning, and would try again the next day.

Day Three

Day three dawned bright and sunny and I logged on in hopes of getting my pig farm started for real. On day two, I had bread the bull and cow I found, and my female horse was 2 days from giving birth, so I fully expected to have better luck with the pigs today. When I got down to my farm, though, I received the second shock in two days as both my remaining pigs were dead.

I know the game moves at a fast pace – 8 real life hours is 24 hours Wurm time as far as I know, but I was gone less than 8 hours. I checked on them before I went to bed at 12am, and found their bodies at 6am. I can't believe that they could have gotten diseased and died in that time frame, and I really don't think any of the villagers on my deed would have caused them harm if they had logged in – or at least they would have butchered and buried them if they did.

So I am left with an unsolved mystery – three little pigs dead in less than two days and no reason. No big bad wolf was around and I don't think they went off to the market. I am upgrading my fences to stone, but i really don't think that would have made a difference. I will report back if I ever find out what happened, but for now, I am done with trying to raise pigs. Cows and horses just seem more robust and resistant to dying. Pigs also eat too much.