Crystal KimHan is taking her cause — and her potbellied pig Pork Chop — to city hall.
And with her every step of the way is Best Friends’ Yvonne McIntosh, manager of Piggy Paradise where potbellied pigs live at the sanctuary. Pork Chop is one of KimHan’s rescued potbellies.
Together, they’re working with the Nye County Commission in Pahrump, Nevada, about 60 miles southwest of Las Vegas, to have a new ordinance put on the books so that pig breeding in the area doesn’t go unchecked.
They’re concerned about the rising numbers of potbellied pigs who have been abandoned or left in shelters as more and more homes in southern Nevada are foreclosed on. Pigs can have eight to 12 piglets at one time and they’re able to breed every four months.
As it stands now in Nye County, according to KimHan, who runs the nonprofit VegasPigPets, potbellied pigs are bred by backyard breeders and at pig farms where pigs are classified as livestock instead of as companion pets. “We’d like them to be treated the same as dogs and cats,” KimHan says.
In the meantime, a feed store operator, who sells potbellied pigs, has placed literature from KimHan in his store on how to care for pigs. He has also agreed to not sell unneutered male pigs and KimHan has found a vet who will do that inexpensively for him.
For her part, McIntosh is working with KimHan to help combat the large numbers of pigs being bred and sold in large quantities and supplied to cities in the region. “A majority of the pigs living in and around Las Vegas and St. George were bred in Pahrump,” McIntosh says. Unfortunately, she says, some of those pigs end up in shelters that are ill equipped to care for them.
KimHan couldn’t be happier that she has McIntosh on her side.
“Yvonne, as busy as she is, supports all my education and legislative efforts and helps me, whether it's in person or writing letters, to reduce the unwanted and unnecessary breeding of these special animals,” KimHan says. “She has not only helped me drive unwanted pigs to a sanctuary in Colorado by using her own trailer, she has also offered to appear with me anytime I make a presentation about potbelly pigs. She feels it is important for all of us in the pig rescue business to stand together to get positive action and reaction, and I need all the support I can get from experts like Yvonne.”
McIntosh earlier this year drove two adult pigs, displaced because of their people losing their homes, and a piglet named Tobias, who were rescued by KimHan, to a Colorado sanctuary. For McIntosh, educating people — and now Nye County commissioners — has become a way of life. And she doesn’t mind. When she talks to people about pigs, she says, “I speak from the heart.”
Having Best Friends onboard with KimHan could make all the difference in changing how pigs are bred and treated in southern Nevada and outlying areas. “Best Friends has an immense amount of outreach, between volunteers, visitors, those who read our website and those who read our magazine. We’re doing a lot to educate people about pigs,” McIntosh says. “That’s what our department is about.”
And Pork Chop, as a potbellied ambassador, will be reaching out too when KimHan and McIntosh appear down the road at a county commission meeting in Pahrump. “Pork Chop is a star,” KimHan says.
Written by Cathy Scott Photos by Molly Wald
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