Mother Pig Rescued With Piglets After Fleeing Farm, Giving Birth In Woods

A mother pig and her piglets will spend the rest of their lives in peace after she busted out of a farm while pregnant and gave birth in the forest.

Now named Matilda, the mother was feeding her newborn litter when a dog walker discovered her in the woods in Nottinghamshire, England, the BBC reported.

The dog walker, Anna Aston, got in touch with Brinsley Animal Rescue, a charity that finds new homes for rescued animals and runs its own sanctuary. Aston told the BBC she wanted to see the mother and her piglets live happily ever after.

“I think she has earned her freedom now,” Aston said.

The rescue group shared photos of the pig family on Facebook , saying in one post on Thursday it was “pleading” with the farm Matilda had escaped from to turn her over.

The next day, the organization said the farmer had agreed and the pigs were at the sanctuary .

“Matilda & her piglets have spent the first night of freedom with us resting,” Brinsley Animal Rescue wrote in a subsequent post. “She is such a good mother [to] them, now she no-longer needs to worry about their plight.”

One of the nine piglets has been named Regan after Regan Russell, an animal rights activist who was hit by a truck and killed while giving water to pigs on trailers headed to a slaughterhouse in Ontario, Canada, last year.

The rescue group also said it would be seeking “life-long homes” for the pigs after the piglets were old enough.