Baby pot belly

Question
I Got a 3 week old pot belly yesterday. I found out later that she should have stayed with her mother longer. She seems very healthy, but she was very traumatized. She will let us hold her and she loves to snuggle but she doesn't seem to want to eat, she also sleeps almost all day. She is active when she is awake.. I got her some goat milk and rice cereal but we have to actually put it in her mouth for her to eat it. Please help we are already in love with her

Answer
As you know, it's very traumatic for a baby piglet to be taken from Mom and placed in a new home. Baby is probably exhausted. When she gets a little older, she'll be awake longer and longer.

Make a "safe space" fpr baby, with a bed and litter box. It doesn't have to be large, a closet, laundry room or small bathroom is fine. Put slightly warm goat milk in a shallow pan. Put baby and the pan in the safe space, and leave her alone for a couple of hours. The peace and quiet should make her feel comfortable enough to start eating on her own.

When she's eating the goat milk for meals, start mixing pellets in the milk. Mix in just a few to start, and continue until the milk/pellet mixture is like cream of wheat cereal. I'd continue to feed this soft mix until she's 6 or 7 weeks old, then gradually start replacing the milk with water. After that, you can continue to feed the pellets wet, which helps piggy get enough water and improves digestion, or gradually reduce the water until piggy is eating dry pellets.

Tiny piglets have to go potty often. You'll need to take her to the potty often, like every hour or so. By the time she's 8 weeks old, she might be able to go two hours without pottying. She will be nearly a year old before she can go four or five hours without needing to potty.

I highly recommend the book Pot-Bellied Pig Behavior and Training by Priscilla Valentine. Two other excellent resources are the dvds A Pig in the House and Amazing Pig Tricks from Top Hogs (www.tophogs.com). Some online resources are www.pigs4ever.com, www.farec.org, and www.petpigs.com