7 week old mini pot bellied

Question
I adopted a mini pot bellied piglet that is going on 7 weeks old and is 2.7 pounds.  She was raised on a bottle after she was three days old due to a wild raccoon.  I can not get her to eat the mini pig food.  I have softened it with milk, put it on my finger to her mouth, but she will not eat it.  She only wants the bottle.  Then after eating, she sneezes alot like she is aspirating formula, although there is none coming out of her nose.  Her lungs sound clear, but I am worried about rhinitis.  How often and how much formula should she be drinking, and is the sneezing normal?  I had her to the vet and he said she was healthy.

Answer
Your baby is very small for a 7 week old. Normally, piglets should gain about 1 lb a week until they are four or five months old.

Piggies love to drink from bottles, and it can be a handy way to give a piggy water when traveling on the road. But there's also a danger of aspiration, which you are aware of.

Start by teaching her to drink out of a pan. Babies as young as one week can easily drink from a pan, so your baby should be able to do it. But, she may prefer a bottle, and pigs can be very stubborn, so no more bottle. She must eat from the pan only. Use a shallow dish or pan, put a chunk of soft bread in it, and pour the formula over that.

She might not want to eat from the pan, and may even skip a meal or two. That's Ok.

Once you have her eating from the pan, instead of bread, put a few pellets in. Let them soak for a few minutes so they're mushy. Then continue to add pellets until she's eating something the consistency of thick oatmeal. At that point, gradually reduce the amount of formula until she's eating dry pellets.

Also, you might want to try using starter pellets instead of adult food. The starter formulas have milk in them and pigs think it's much tastier than ordinary food.

The sneezing is probably from inhaling a bit of liquid. Probably just enough to tickle her nose. Some pigs enjoy blowing bubbles in their drinking water, and will sneeze afterwards.