GRASS VALLEY, Nevada County -- Kim Sturla remembers the first time she saw Bruce.

He was standing on a muddy hillside in Vacaville, near starvation, some 300 pounds shy of what a pig should weigh.

"He was a skeleton with a hide over it," she said, her eyes welling up with tears. "Such immense neglect on every level."

Had he been a dog, maybe a horse, or perhaps something more exotic like a tiger or chimpanzee, someone other than Sturla might have cared.

Luckily for this bristly, snout-nosed pig, Sturla did care. She appealed to the local authorities, got custody and took Bruce back to the Animal Place, her sanctuary for farm animals, then in Vacaville.

Alongside the chickens, goats, sheep, turkeys, rabbits, cows and other pigs at the sanctuary, Bruce lived in hog heaven with plentiful food, water, shelter, love and a future that didn't include a skillet.

Animal Place - which now includes the relocated sanctuary on 600 acres in Grass Valley and the site in Vacaville for rescued and adoptable farm animals - has rescued thousands of farm animals, many from Bay Area counties, since executive director Sturla started saving them 25 years ago.

One of largest rescue groups

With 12 full-time employees and nearly 300 permanent resident farm animals, it is among the largest of only a couple dozen farm rescue groups nationwide.

It costs about $900,000 per year to run the two sites, money donated by individuals rather than animal rights foundations or taxpayers.

"It's hard getting people to empathize with the chickens," Sturla said, shaking her head. "It's a hard, hard sell."

To Sturla and her staff - all vegans - an animal, no matter what kind, is worth saving. Many of the animals at the sanctuary have sad life stories with a tragic end averted.

Auntie Star, for example, was a weed-abatement goat who refused to eat the briar and bramble remnants left after the lush stuff was gone. When goats get hungry enough, they usually eat what's left. But some refuse and starve to death, said Marji Beach, the sanctuary's education director.

Auntie Star's hunger strike got her a new home in Grass Valley.

Sadie came out of a dairy farm, where cows must be bred to maintain lactation and newborn calves are typically separated from their moms at birth.

"Sadie just hated people," Beach said.

Adopting out chickens

About 100 of the chickens at the sanctuary came from an egg farm in Turlock (Stanislaus County), the luckiest among 50,000 abandoned and without food for two weeks before local authorities found them in February. Nearly 20,000 were already dead and most of the others too sick to survive.

The Animal Place rescued more than 4,000, keeping them in Vacaville or adopting them out to new homes. The last of the adoptable chickens were placed in November.

The 100 at the sanctuary had been kept in pens their whole lives and had never felt the dirt beneath their feet. It took them 20 minutes before they could figure out how to strut.

Every animal at the sanctuary has a name, and the staff usually can identify them without peeking at their identification bands.

The new white poults (baby turkeys) are named after spices, while many of the chickens are named for alcoholic beverages - think Kahlua and Margarita.

All the animals are spayed, neutered, sterilized or castrated to avert having more mouths to feed.

The sanctuary opened to visitors about six months ago, allowing families, school groups or Scout troops to walk the pens and barns or get a guided tour.

Sturla understands that some are baffled by her devotion to save animals that more often than not are associated with breakfast or Thanksgiving dinner.

Room for wandering

She described the lives of the typical farm animal - stuffed in small spaces to lay eggs, give milk or grow big enough to slaughter.

Such animals experience "the greatest suffering and have the least protection," she said.

At the Grass Valley sanctuary, there are several barns, each with at least an acre outside so the animals can wander during the day.

In her life before farm animals, Sturla worked at the Peninsula Humane Society saving pets, but she decided to change her animal focus after a piglet was brought in from a home in East Palo Alto.

"They wanted to get her up to 200 pounds and barbecue her," Sturla said of the owners.

At the time, there was no safe haven for the pig. And so, with Zelda the pig in tow, Sturla embarked on her life's calling.

She and her then-husband, a veterinary professor, sold their home, drained their savings and bought land in Vacaville in the late 1980s. By 2009, the Animal Place had outgrown the space and using donations, bought the Grass Valley site.

At her desk on a recent cold winter day, she sipped hot tea out of a white mug adorned with a photo of Bruce the pig.

The picture shows a spotted, fat, wiry, clean pig standing on a daybed of hay set on a grassy hillside.

Sturla's eyes well up as she looks at it.

After about seven years at the sanctuary, Bruce died a natural death about a month ago and was buried on a Grass Valley hillside, a boulder marking the spot.

It's a novel concept for farm animals, Sturla said.

"We let them live out their lives."