Colo. boar gets a fresh start at FFA program after crime spree

From weeks of crime on the streets to the Eads FFA Chapter’s swine farm, Fred the pig, Aurora, Colorado’s most famous porcine, has found a home.

In September, Eads High School’s FFA program picked up four gilts to expand educational programs at the school’s ag farm. Fred, a 400- to 600-pound (nobody’s been able to weigh him yet) blue butt boar, will join the school’s gilts to teach FFA members and students about livestock husbandry.

After either escaping or being turned loose from his original home, the Aurora Animal Shelter and the Aurora Police Department were able to capture and place Fred in the shelter on Sept. 27. Before his capture, though, Fred had a little bit of “fun.” Law enforcement and animal services received two weeks’ worth of calls about traffic disturbances and property damage as Fred made his way through neighborhoods, rooting up lawns and surprising homeowners who aren’t used to seeing farm animals in suburbia.

“We responded out a few times,” Augusta Allen, field supervisor for Aurora Animal Services, told TV station Denver 7, “The first couple of times, we were unable to find what was causing the problems.”

According to news sources, while animal services knew they were looking for a pig, they were surprised at how large this one actually was. It took eight people, five hours, and a rope to capture the pig, who was taken to the shelter before being adopted by the FFA program.

Pigs aren’t a normal sight in Aurora because they’re a prohibited species. The animal shelter suspects that Fred’s original owners may have failed to claim him knowing that he’s an animal they really shouldn’t have had in the city limits.