Attachment to Food Animals

I hit this point at almost exactly the same time for every pig that I raise: she is eating a lot and getting more personable every day. Yesterday when I was trying to adjust her feeding trough, Tink (registered Berkshire) came up and started to talk to me. Previously she would make little grunts of excitement when eating but this time she came up, looked at me, and ignoring her food, commenced to have a little conversation with me. As a child we did not raise swine, my father considers them 'unclean'. So this whole porcine fencing, feeding, and grunting this has been a completely new experience. One I am dismayed to find I love not for the meat, but for the interaction with the pigs! Getting attached is something to be avoided in this business...but the reason for getting into it is because at the bottom line, I love animals more than people. So learning that there is yet another animal on the list just makes it that much harder to commit to making our homestead pay for itself rather than just turning into a petting zoo.