Life in the PigPen

Raising hogs for show & sustenance

Raising hogs isn’t for the faint of heart. They’re stubborn, occupy a lot of space, are notroriously vocal, and tend to be smelly. But, all that said, they also have a way of rooting their way into the hearts of those who get close to them.

This January, young agricultural enthusiasts gathered at the Guadalupe County Fairgrounds to compete for ribbons and sales rights with their project animals in this year’s Guadalupe County Youth Livestock & Homemaker Show.

In a corner pen of the hog barn, a young girl clad in a pink t-shirt and blue jeans let out a boisterous laugh and threw her arms across two pigs who lay snoozing in the sawdust. Bethany McCormick was her name and she is a Guadalupe County eleven-year-old who attends Lockhart Jr. High. In third grade, she started showing pigs with Navarro 4-H. Ever since then, her whole world has revolved around them.

“You’re with them constantly,” Bethany said. “People are going to be complaining, and be like, ‘quit talking about pigs, talk about something else,’ but I spend six months out of the year with them.”

A typical day involves getting the pigs fed in the morning. She does this herself on weekends, but her family helps out on weekdays. Then she sets off to school, where she has to maintain passing grades to compete with her animals. Once the school bell rings, Abigails heads home to work with her hogs.

Since show pigs aren’t allowed on a leash, they must learn to obey their handler’s commands, which are given using a stick called a hog bat. By waving the bat in the pig’s field of vision and tapping them on their shoulders, a skilled showman can deftly maneuver their pig wherever they want.

“Once they get comfortable, we go everywhere,” Bethany said. “We walk to the gate and back, down around the field....to the pink palace and back –– which is my deer blind. They’re stubborn, they’re they’re own creatures. They have their own brain, their own personality. On the weekend I wake up and I’m just like meh, but dad’s like, ‘go feed your pigs,’ so I go feed –– give them their certain feeds that help them bring out the gut and keep them muscular. One of my favorite pigs, Pumpkin, gorgeous thing, he was so sweet. You’d be walking and he’d be climbing up on the fence, like ‘You got stuff for me? You gonna come say hi?’”