What do i have here?

Question
Hi, We adopted/rescued our mini pig about  a month ago. She is a sweet, yet spoiled little piggy! Unfortunately, the woman who we adopted her from was not honest with us. Clarisse was not litter trained, nor has she been spayed, and I suspect she was underfed. Poor girl! We were told she is two years old, but I`m starting to think she is much younger. Is there Any way we can estimate her true age?  If she`s going to be a 150 lb piggy,we need to move...Soon. thanks for your time

Answer
Unfortunately, the only accurate way to guestimate the final adult size of a pig is to see both parents at age 5. Of course, that can't happen in this case.

A vet can determine her approximate age from her teeth. Pigs have three sets of teeth in their lives, the final molars do not erupt until the pig is about 2.5 yrs old.

It used to be that the average pig was about 90% fully grown at age 2. But recently, rescues and sanctuaries are getting pigs who are very small until they are about 2.5 or 3 yrs old.

Pigs are dense animals. When a pig and dog are the same size, the pig will weigh more, sometimes more than twice as much as the dog! A 150 lb pig is considerably smaller than a German Shepherd, who might weigh half that.

Yahoo Groups has a number of groups devoted to pet pigs. PigInfoAndChat is a particularly good one, with lots of people who have seen lots of pigs. I suggest joining and posting a few pigtures of Clarisse. Of course having a vet examine her to find her age from her teeth will give you a much more accurate measurement. There's a list of vets who see pet pigs at www.farec.org