Compassionate Coexistence

The Life with Pigs Farm Animal Sanctuary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is a love story on many levels.

It all started when Ryan Phillips found himself faced with a female pig who had been repeatedly exploited in a backyard breeding operation. He had a choice: He could adopt the pig and she would live, or he could say no and she would likely be slaughtered. 

At the time, he was living in a second floor condo with a no-pet policy. But he chose not only to keep the pig, whom he named Pumpkin, but also to take in one of her babies, whom he named Charlotte. 

Soon Ryan found himself with a third pig, a rescued rabbit, and an adopted chicken – all of whom he carried up and down the stairs every day so they could have access to the outside. He also found himself with the need for a new home. He found a piece of land outside Colonial Williamsburg that was zoned agricultural and started the nonprofit sanctuary.

Later, he was contacted by a farmer’s daughter who was trying to save the life of a female freemartin- or a calf born as a twin with a 90 percent likelihood of never being able to have babies or produce milk. Because freemartins aren’t seen as “useful” in the dairy industry, they are typically slaughtered. 

When Ryan saved that cow, whom he named Jenna and refers to as “the spirited little calf who lived,” he was also inviting his future wife, Mallory, into his life.

After he nursed Jenna back to health, Ryan found out that she hadn’t come to him with full permission – and so started a frenzied battle to keep custody of her. Mallory, who was living in Arizona and following Life with Pigs on social media, heard about the duo’s plight. She got in contact, organized campaign actions, and flew to Virginia to be present during a peaceful protest. 

The two humans fell in love and got married in April 2024, accompanied by Jenna as Ryan’s “Best Cow” and many of the sanctuary’s most social residents in honored roles. The Phillips both said they couldn’t have imagined committing their lives to each other without the animals by their sides; at the sanctuary, each animal is considered a known and loved member of the family.

The sanctuary keeps that perspective at the forefront of their mission to educate people about the injustices faced by animals and how people can better coexist with them.

“We operate under the guiding light that animals are our equals and deserve equal consideration for their needs and desires,” the sanctuary writes on its website. “A huge part of our mission is providing a happily-ever-after home to the animals most abused by human society.”

The sanctuary is home to more than 20 animals, including pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, sheep, geese, dogs, frogs, toads, Sam the tortoise, Tesla the rabbit, and Sassy the parrot – all of whom are permanent residents. 

Ryan said he decided early on not to adopt any of the animals out because he wanted to stay small enough to truly know each animal and to offer each resident the security and stability of a forever home.

“For us to be able to create a sense of home and stability, a ‘This is my family, and these people will do anything for me’ seemed really important,” he said over Zoom in May 2024. “On the individual level, we want to create that sense of ‘You are loved, you are safe, you have a family that is looking out for you.’”

The following interview with Ryan (RP) and Mallory Phillips (MP) has been edited for length and style. To listen to the full conversation, check out Episode 9 of the Compassionate Coexistence podcast here! 

To support Life with Pigs, visit their website here or follow along with their adventures on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, and X.

A Q&A with Ryan and Mallory Phillips of Life With Pigs Sanctuary

Please share more about the creation of the Life with Pigs Sanctuary.

RP: I had been involved in activism, including standing on a corner with a sign every day. At that point, none of my thoughts were related to, “Let’s start a sanctuary.” But it just so happened that a family who saw me standing there messaged me one day at like one in the morning and said, “Hey, would you be willing to take in this pig? She’s a breeder pig, and if you don’t she’ll probably be put down.” 

At the time, I lived in a condo and I had never had experience with pigs, outside of visiting a sanctuary. It sounded crazy! But letting something bad happen to this pig who I now felt connected to, just from this message, sounded crazier. So I thought, “Ok, I can do this.” 

After doing a little research, I found that pigs in the wild will stay together as a family. Knowing that this was a mother pig who had lost all of her babies from people coming and taking them away, I thought, “What better thing could I do for this mom than to make sure she gets to keep one of her babies?” which ended up being Charlotte.

I still wasn’t a sanctuary at that point. I was just a guy in a condo with two pigs. Then that same family tried to rescue another pig, and it wasn’t working out. They asked if I could watch her for a few days, and so Millie became the third member of our family. So I ended up with three pigs in a condo. In addition, we had a rescue Yorkie living with us at the time, then a rescued rabbit, and finally a Rhode Island red chicken. 

At that time, I thought, “I’m not really meant for condo life at this point.” I found a property that was zoned agricultural, on a railroad track, which kept the price down, about 15 minutes from Colonial Williamsburg. 

Mallory, can you share more about why you felt this sanctuary was so special that you were willing to pick up your life and move across the country to be part of it?

MP: I remember seeing a video of Ryan and Jenna, one of our cows, and thinking that Ryan was really cute. I had been vegan for about a year, and I remember thinking, “I would love to find a guy like that” – but never in a million years thought that anything would come of it. I started following the sanctuary on social media and learned about a situation that had come up where someone had brought a young female calf to Life with Pigs who was on death’s door, and then I watched posts about her as she started to get healthy and then learned that the police had come and taken her away. Ryan was obviously devastated and trying to fight to get her back, because where she came from was not treating her or taking care of her in any way. So I was outraged on his behalf and started organizing campaigns, and then somebody organized a protest and I flew out to be there for the animals. 

What really drew me to Ryan and the animals was seeing how much they were a part of his life and he was a part of theirs. Our house is set up in the middle of the sanctuary where everyone can come up to the window or come in the house. It was different in that they are all a part of our family, as well as the uniqueness of all the animals that are here. 

Can you talk more about some of the choices you made to ensure that LWP is a true sanctuary for animals – such as offering a permanent home to all your residents or how you handle public tours?

RP: Going back to the beginning, something that has always been important to me is that I didn’t want to be a part of the bad stuff happening to animals in the world anymore. For me, there were two aspects — changing it for the individual animal, and then from a wider perspective, helping people change how they see animals.

The best way I can help individual animals is to make them feel a part of the family. The best way I can help people change how they see animals is by showing them these individuals – by saying “This is Jenna, and this is how she interacts with the world,” and having them see Jenna stick her head through the window or need a hug because she wants attention. It gives people a perspective that I can’t really give them if we had a certain number of cows out in a field.

Being able to connect with the animals that closely and then transfer that through social media to people’s minds so they start to reshape how they think about these animals covers both of these bases that are so important.

MP: (Regarding public tours and animals’ needs), I have very strong mama bear tendencies, and educating people about how to approach animals is huge. Whenever we have visitors, I give a speech to make it very clear that this is the animals’ home, and their comfort is very important. I make sure people know that if an animal walks away, they want some space and so we don’t follow them, and we definitely don’t chase them. Most of our animals, fortunately, associate humans with good things at this point, so they are really excited when visitors come. But I do stress that their comfort is really important, and people are really understanding about it.

RP: The part that Mallory says that is most important is “This is their home. You are coming into their home.” By contrast, I think people go into a petting zoo thinking, “This is for me,” but Mallory does a good job of establishing that “This sanctuary is for them, and you are getting to be a part of it.” 

MP: As another example, I think of one of our pigs, Pumpkin, who loves people. There could be 20 people wanting to pet her, and she would just be fine with it and roll over for a belly rub. Even though I know that, I still don’t want people to be mobbing her. You wouldn’t go up and do that to a dog, and you certainly wouldn’t do that to a person or a baby! So I will teach people to have respect and to see her as an individual who deserves respect.

Have you seen visitors form meaningful and memorable connections with animals, even with the healthy boundaries you’ve put in place to protect the animals’ well-being?

RP: In some ways, I think having the animals choose them and choose to seek them out makes it an even more powerful experience (than just shoving their hands all over an animal, like at a petting zoo). For example, our turkey Quincy will choose one or two kids and follow them around. The kids figure out that if they walk, he will follow them, and if they turn, he will circle and follow them. They form that connection, and the kids just had a genuine interaction and encounter that he initiated.

Another example I see is with our blind dwarf cow Annie. She explores the world with her tongue and will get right up with people to introduce herself or greet them. You can just see kids’ faces light up when they are interacting with this little fluffy cow that is right up in their space and is instigating it; it’s not like they are having to seek her out or force anything out of her. After the tour, kids will gravitate to Annie and tell their parents how much they love her. 

So allowing the animals to be the instigators of affection or interaction in a way becomes more meaningful because there is an investment from the animal, and that in turn makes the connection more real.

How do you balance the joy of interacting with happy animals with educating people about the gruesome realities of animal agriculture? 

MP:  One of the things I’ve noticed is that in having the animal present who is potentially the victim of the situation, people tend to not really react negatively to that information. We’ve had conversations with people at public events where people are not really receptive to information about animal agriculture. But here, when we’re talking about being here in the animals’ home and seeing the animals and hearing their direct stories, people are much more receptive. In meeting the animals, they’ve had that positive connection, and they can see them as individuals.

RP: Another thing that we try to do is to give information rather than an emotional appeal. So when I am talking about what would have happened to Jenna on a dairy farm, I will share about how old she would have been at slaughter and what would have happened to her — as direct facts. With our chickens, for example, that could be saying, “They would just take all the egg-laying hens in here and after two years (when egg production wanes) and kill them all.”

What keeps you going during hard times or when confronted with the massive scope of farmed animal suffering happening every day? 

RP:  Being on the sanctuary, surrounded by animals living happy lives, gives a certain amount of padding. It blunts the world out there, because our experience here is overwhelmingly happy animals. 

When we get reminded of the world outside the sanctuary, what helps me is remembering the accumulated number of people who have reached out years later and said, for example, “Hey, I remember seeing you walk your pigs in Colonial Williamsburg, and we ended up stopping eating meat as a family because of that.” At the time, I had no idea that change was even a remote thought on this group’s horizon! 

So what helps me is knowing that there is a reasonable chance that people will care if I can keep it together and present the realities in a way in which people can get this information and have their own time to process it. No matter how unintentionally hurtful or insensitive something that someone might say, I try to focus on, “I still have an opportunity to impart something that might change the way they see things or the way that they come at this in the future.”  Knowing that some of the worst interactions I have had have resulted in some of the best ends helps keep me calm. 

MP: Talking to other people who are involved in activism and trying to make the same changes we are is really helpful because we all have the same struggles. Being around happy animals is really helpful, and limiting interactions with people who are eating animals can also really be helpful. It’s also important to take care of yourself to keep going. 

What advice or insight do you have for people who want to start a sanctuary?

RP: We’ve had a lot of people say to us that they want to start a sanctuary someday, and then they come to visit and maybe a half day into it, they’ll be like, “Maybe, I just want to volunteer at a sanctuary.”

People should know that you’re usually on a tight budget, and you quickly realize to some degree (unless you are self-funded) that your success is based on your ability to connect people to what you are doing. A lot of running a sanctuary is trying to figure out, “How do I get this message out there in a way that helps people feel connected”? 

You have to do a lot of things on your own to save money. I’ve learned to build, to do electricity, plumbing… pretty much anything so I have more money to invest in vet bills or feed or whatever it is that is a constant need. 

You also need to go into this knowing it is going to be a constant labor of love. You need to know your skills, your weaknesses, and how you are going to overcome them. You have to be able to figure out how to get everything done, how to fund it, and then to remember that the most important part is the animals and making sure that they have that sense of home and security. No matter what I am doing, I want to make sure that I make time to stop if someone wants love. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with how much there is to do, but I’m never going to let it become this thing that I “have” to do.

MP: There are so many skills that you don’t initially think of in running a sanctuary. Actually caring for the animals is a small part of everything you need to do. You are constantly trying to fundraise, so you have to be able to film, to create compelling social media, to do ads and budgeting and accounting and filling out all kinds of government forms. There is so much paperwork and documentation. 

You do have to get people to connect with you and to like you. You really can’t be someone who just wants to hide and hang out with the animals all day, even though those are often the kind of people who might be drawn to sanctuary. 

Before starting a sanctuary, I would definitely say spend time with someone who is running a sanctuary, volunteer, and make sure that you are going when the weather is terrible, when you are not feeling well and when you don’t want to go (because the animals will still need you).

You also have to be okay with always being behind. You’re never going to be like, “Oh, everything is just caught up.” There is always stuff I feel like we should have done six months ago.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share? 

MP: I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who would say they want to hurt animals. So think about if your actions are aligning with that. If you are someone who doesn’t want to hurt animals, yet you are paying for someone else to harm them… is that really what you want to be doing? For me, when I evaluated that, the answer was “No. I am someone who is hurting animals” — and that inspired me to make the change. It is hard to look at yourself closely like that, but it’s absolutely worth it to have that sense of being a person who lives by your values — even when they are not the popular thing, or they are different from how most people live. I know at the end of the day that I am someone who is going to stand up for animals and do what I think is right, even in the face of a lot of pushback from people who I am very close to, so I can live by my values and not keep quiet just because I don’t want to rock the boat.

RP: As far as a way people can be more compassionate to animals, I think it is getting to know animals and what they are really like when they are in a situation where they are comfortable. Once people experience that, it breaks down that barrier of, “These animals exist for our reasons.” So many people get to know the various animals here at the sanctuary and they are stunned; they can’t stop realizing, for example, that the chicken at the grocery store could have been Talia. Once they start making those connections, it’s a lot harder to let that shield come back down. I think for nearly all people, it’s not a matter of changing who you are to become vegan; it’s actually living how you have always felt. You didn’t change from someone who wanted to hurt animals to someone who didn’t; you became the person you thought you should be based on the position of not wanting animals to be harmed. I think that’s why a lot of people say, “The only thing I regret is not doing it sooner.”

Featured Image: Charlotte, Millie, and Pumpkin (Courtesy of Life with Pigs)