Capturing the hearts of families around the Roaring Fork Valley, Daisy, the Yorkshire pig of Happy Day Ranch (HDR) in Emma, passed away on May 2 surrounded by the farmers who loved her. She was eight years old and weighed 500-600 pounds.
Alizabeth Koster, Daisy’s owner, said that Daisy “put HDR on the map” when she graced the front page of The Sopris Sun (Nov. 5, 2020). Photographed by Jane Bachrach, Daisy was enjoying pumpkins, her favorite fall treat.
“I’d see people [at the farm] that I didn’t know because they would come see Daisy,” Koster said. “They saw on Facebook and in the paper that she wanted pumpkins, and they’d come feed her.”
From a young age, Daisy was a force to reckon with. At just a few weeks old and weighing five pounds, she escaped out of a stock truck and was rescued on I-70 by local friends, according to Koster.
“Our friends called us because they knew we had the farm, and I was like, well any pig that’s smart enough to jump off the truck earns herself a pardon in life,” she laughed. Scraped up and broken from the fall, Koster and her family took Daisy into their home and bottle-fed her for weeks. When Daisy outgrew the home, she was brought outside to enjoy life as a pet pig.
“She was super smart and learned to come when we called her faster than the dogs did,” Koster said. “Her breed is also super stubborn, so when she got bigger she was like, ‘I don’t need to listen to you anymore.’”
According to Koster, they were not sure how long or big Daisy would grow considering her breed had been generationally-bred to grow quickly for slaughter, which is typically around six months.
“We knew she was going to have problems at some point, because [this breed] grows too big for their own joints,” Koster said. “Nothing natural is happening because everything has been hormone-altered for generations.”
Despite the known problems, they kept Daisy comfortable by controlling the amount of pig grain she ate, and allowing her to eat as many fruits and vegetables as she desired.
“We haven’t had any food waste in eight years because we would just give it to Daisy,” Koster said.
Over the years, Daisy helped local families learn about humane living conditions for animals typically brought into stockyards.
“She would have been crammed in where there was no room to turn her around. She had her big teeth pulled out, so she wouldn’t bite the other pigs,” Koster said. “There are a lot of local farms here that raise them in a more humane way than the big meat farms.”
While families will no longer be able to bring a pumpkin or two for Daisy, the fond memories of a warm Sunday afternoon on the farm will live on.
“She really did bring the community together,” Koster said. “She got everybody excited about coming to the farm and taught a lot of people about pigs.”