JEFFERSONVILLE, Ga. — For three weeks this spring, the animals at Jail Creek Farms brought home the bacon.
Tammy and Joe Albert own and run the farm. "We took 10 pigs, and they ranged in age from 2 weeks to probably about 3 years," Tammy said.
Tammy says their hogs are animals you would have seen on a farm 100 years ago. "We raise heritage breed animals," she said. They're primarily goats and pigs.
"The main thing we're using them for is to help and clear the land," she said.
But the movie business had meatier plans for the swine.
Benji, Pig Pig, and Root, and 7 of their friends have a cameo appearance in a movie shot in Georgia this summer.
The Alberts had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so we can't tell you the name of the movie but we can tell you it comes out next summer, but Tammy did tell us the crew hired them on as animal wranglers, which means they had to get all of the critters to give an Oscar-worthy performance.
"The most challenging thing being a animal wrangler on set is getting that animal to do what the director wants it to do without the animal getting stressed and without the animal knowing it was your idea to get them to do it," Tammy explained.
Here, leash training begins at a young age. However at 5 weeks old, baby pigs have a mind of their own and tend to call the whole thing hogwash, but Tammy says things went smoother in May and she'll never look at the big screen the same way again.
"Anytime you watch a movie after that has any type of animal in it, your mind's going as to, 'How did they do the scene?' how they got the animals to do that, which direction the camera was looking, the angles and all of that," Tammy said.
The hogs don't seem to care about any of that, but they're probably piggy proud when it comes to the experience.
The film crew called the Alberts because they had a hog named Wilbur appear in a television show last year and they wanted that same breed of animal, which is an American Guinea Hog.