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Neil Hing, a ranger the Rural Lands Protection Boards – a regional animal health and agricultural protection service – is now due to visit Ms Hayes’s property on Wednesday to take Bruce away.

Mr Hing said Bruce, who is currently bathing happily in the dam at the bottom of Ms Hayes’s property, was most likely to end up as bacon. Or perhaps sausages.

“Most pigs at some point in their life end up getting slaughtered, it’s just a way of life,” said Mr Hing, who is a feral pig specialist. “It will be done in the most humane way which will be under the codes of practice.”

Mr Hing said he had seen many cases of domestic pigs abandoned to fend for themselves or being adopted by others before, but none that got as much attention as Bruce.

He said if Bruce was kept any longer at Ms Hayes’s property there was a risk he would turn feral.

“He’s a small male who is not de-sexed so he potentially could get more aggressive, and the risk of disease is high,” he said.

“They have a lovely waterway there and he’s been wallowing about in her dam and making that all muddy so that could get dangerous.”

It is illegal to feed domestic pigs anything other than vegetable scraps because if they are fed meat or by-products they are in danger of contracting foot and mouth disease, Mr Hing said.

Ms Hayes said she “hasn’t stopped crying” at the thought of Bruce being put down. “He’s a nuisance but he’s just a cute little Aussie fella.”

Despite his current notoriety, Bruce is not the most famous pig in Australia. In 1995 Australian filmmakers George Miller and Chris Noonan melted the hearts of cinemagoers with Babe, the Oscar-winning tale of a pig who thinks it’s a sheepdog.

Babe was not the first pig on the big screen, however. A more sinister pig was immortalised with the 1985 film Razorback, about a feral pig terrorising an Australian Outback town.

But pigs running wild doesn’t just happen in Australia. In 1998 two pigs, nicknamed Butch and Sundance, captivated Britain when they evaded slaughter and went on the run for a week.

The story of the Tamworth Two was also turned into a movie by the BBC.

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