Hannah and Steve found their new lives were a mixed blessing. It was a mostly carefree existance, free of responsibility and obligation, which largely consisted of eating, sleeping and mating. For much of the day, the sows sat about like human girls of their age usually do, gossiping and socialising. They would then spend the evenings with the males assigned to them. However, human handlers treating them like animals came with downsides. The girls were expected to be either producing children or nursing them. And as they grew attached to their offspring, they would soon be whisked off to another set of pens away from their parents. They were mostly porcine, biologically-speaking, but they still cared for their children like human mothers.
One day, it was announced that that specific group of hogs and sows would be moved along to a new sty to accomodate a fresh set of transformed teens. There was understandable concern amongst the animals. "What will happen to us?" "Will we see our piglets ever again?"
There was no attempt to adress their concerns. They were, as far as the handlers were concered, livestock of the farm. They were duly moved through the aisles of the stalls into another farm building, this one darker and less spacious. Further to that, their received much larger portions of food in the troughs. But the laidback lifestyle of the farm had dulled the minds of the pigs, and life soon returned to normal, if less comfortable than before.
As the sows lazily sat around one afternoon, each more fatter than they had ever been in their human or porcine lives, Hannah sat up against the trough. "Is nobody else concerned about why we've been moved here? I don't like this new place at all. And we're definitely being fattened up."
"Don't worry, Han," replied Michelle, another of the sows. "I heard that they had to move us just to free up space for the new recruits. That's all. There's only so much room on this farm."
"But don't you see, that's the problem. Once they have a younger, healthier bunch of sows, and they have no more room for us, what happens then?"
***
One morning, as the sows said goodbye to their boars for the day and entered the communal pen, a handler entered and began examining the sows' ID tags on their ears. "I'm looking for 000234 and 000198. You're both coming with me." It was Michelle and another sow, named Kirsten. They duly followed the handler, unaware of their fate.
Before the handler left, he leant down to Hannah and examined her tag. "You need to eat up, girl. If you don't I'll send you to Force Feeding."
That was enough to scare Hannah. She approached the trough and began hungrily chowing down.