Competing at the World Pork Expo
By Sarah Kiddy
Uploaded November 2009

After l0 hours of flying and hours of hanging around in airports we reached Des Moines in Iowa, the home of the World Pork Expo. Eight of us spent the best part of four days at the event and I'm sure everyone would agree we learnt a lot.

The trip to America that I and eight others went on was organised by the British Pig association and we received grants to go on the trip that paid for our flights and accommodation. The idea was that we learnt about the American Pig industry but probably more importantly learn about the junior swine association and hopefully try and set up a similar scheme in the UK.

The first day after a goodnights sleep and a waffle for breakfast we set off for the showground which was only about 15 minutes from the hotel. We entered the showground and after a few minor issues of remembering where we needed to go we arrived at the pig building. I think it would be fair to say that the first thing we all noticed was the sheer number of pigs there were there, I cant remember ever seeing that many pigs at a show in this country. We then went and found the BPA stand that was in the building opposite the pig shed. After dumping all of our stuff for the day we headed back to the pigs and met up with head of the National Junior Swine Association (NJ SA), she had found people to pair us all of with, giving us the opportunity to ask them questions about how they showed, kept pigs and really anything else we wanted to know and they in turn had the opportunity to ask us how we did it.

Bailey my partner had a 180 pig unit at home, but the pigs she showed would not join the unit once she had finished showing them. Bailey only had two pigs at the show even though she had travelled 8 hours to get there, one was a Duroc Gilt and the other was a York Barrow (Castrate). Barrows were the main thing that was being shown and this was a hard concept for us to understand.

The next day we had a go at showing, it would be fair to say that we all found this a bit of a challenge, there was no board on offer instead we had a long whip to use. The pigs though didn't run generally instead plodding along for the most part though my York barrow did seem to be quite stubborn and getting him out of corners was a challenge. There are no rules at how you walk you pig, it's a complete free for all, getting your pig in front of the judge as much as possible. The pigs are then all penned in the order that they are placed and the first couple are then taken out again to be walked around at which point the judge makes his choice and explains why. The top three competitors generally were asked a couple of questions to determine who went through and it was the top two that then went on to the grand final.

The day after we had all had a go at showing or showmanship as they call it in the states, it was time to put our minds to stock judging. James and I had the strategy that it was like Young farmers stock judging and therefore if we stuck to those principles we would be fine. This theory in part worked though I think the main problem we had was the way in which we judged pigs compared to how they did it. This was a serious business for the NJ SA members we soon came to realise. We in total had six classes to judge on different merits, some were as meat pigs and others as breeding pigs and then of those six classes we were going to have to give reasons as to why we had placed them the way round we had. Each class was judged in silence with a strict 15 minute period at the end of which all cards had to be handed in and backs turned to the pigs. After all the pigs had been judged we were escorted to the area where we to give our reasons. It was very much like being back at school, bringing back memories of being in the school hall when I sat my GCSE's! We all had to sit in rows in the order we were told and await out turn to give our reasons. Whilst I was slightly apprehensive when I sat down this feeling only grew as many people were wandering around talking themselves through there reasons to themselves, instead of focussing my attentions on my own notes I watched in amusement as people wandered along with there lips moving and making wild hand gestures. As I completed my last reasoning, I briefly spoke to the judge who complemented me on what I had just said and then subsequently went on to say how well me counterparts and I had done overall, she was impressed with our reasoning and placing of the pigs considering the different type of pigs that we were judging and out lack of experience.

After completing our judging we headed back to the stand and headed off for some retail therapy at a local saddlery. Later we returned to see how we had faired in our judging, first up was the junior results and Grace was the star of the show, she came second only narrowly missing the top spot on the second tie breaker question. She won a bag and a rosette and had her picture taken with the top 10 juniors. Unfortunately myself, Clare or James could not emulate her success all of us coming outside the top 10. We all definitely enjoyed ourselves despite the time it had taken and felt we needed to work on our skills for the following year so we could give the Americans a true run for there money.

The Saturday was when many of the pigs were auctioned off, we watched this for a while and were amazed by the prices the pigs were making, the top price of the day was for a Duroc boar and he made $60,000 ( approx £40,000). This was then end of our time at the World Pork Expo and we had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The last whole day we spent in Iowa we went out to see a pig farm, we had met a man whilst at the show who had invited us to see his farm just outside of Manchester (it would be fair to say it was much smaller than Manchester England consisting of a few houses and a cemetery). We arrived at the house and were \ welcomed by the family before being taken round to look at some of the sheds of growing pigs, these were like nothing I had seen before the sheds contained 1500 pigs that had all been born in the same week on one farm and then sent on to be fattened at this farm. After seeing three different lots of pigs at different stages of growth we moved on to the auction house also owned by our guide, a farm that he had just brought complete with a house for $80,000 and a local fishery we went to see a friend of his. I have seen machinery before that I thought was large but the combine was massive and there were 5 lorries used for the grain cart. It was definitely a time for boys with there very big toys and I think the males of the group loved having a look and sitting behind the wheel of the combine!!!!!

That was the end of our trip in Iowa all that was left were the flight delays, snoring plane passengers and the long train journey home at the other end. It had been an amazing experience and I know I wasn't alone in not really wanting to come home. The planning for next year began before we departed and we hope we all have as much fun as we had this year. The trip really was an eye opener into what a youth organisation can do and how important it is that we have our own version of the NJ SA here in the UK.