Tye Martin seemed nervous Monday as he watched both of his prize pigs sidle onto the scales at the National Junior Market Swine Show, the Super Bowl of pig shows.
Martin, one of 350 competitors ages 8 to 18, fiddled with the black knob that steers his electric wheelchair.
“I don’t really name them,” he said of the pigs that will someday be called dinner. “It’s not a good idea.”
Because Martin suffers from muscular dystrophy, the 18-year-old from Moriarty, N.M., he has been in a wheelchair since he was 12. He has been a competitor in swine shows since he was 7, and he regularly wins local competitions.
Still, Tye doesn’t spring from a family of pork moguls; the Martin family keeps just three sows to provide Tye and his sister, Kallye, 12, with competitive livestock.
“I showed pigs, my daddy showed pigs and I wanted my kids to be able to do it,” said Dwight Martin, Tye’s father. “They do all the work. It’s their deal.”
The youth swine show is probably the most diverse contest of any at the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo, said Marlin Eisenach, a stock-show superintendent and an extension agent in Morgan County.
Throw race, gender, physical ability or economic status out the window, he said. The competition is about the amount of effort and study a kid is willing to invest in a pig.
“This is what the junior livestock shows are all about,” Eisenach said.
Pigs don’t require vast acreages to graze, they’re not expensive to buy or raise, and they’re small enough for children to tend by themselves.
Even for kids who never step foot on a farm after their time in 4-H clubs or Future Farmers of America, the experience with livestock serves them well for the rest of their lives, Eisenach said.
“It teaches responsibility, dealing with others, processing information and keeping good records – all of these are skills any young person would be lucky to have in any profession,” he said.
And there are other motivations as well. Take Romario Ramos, 14, of North Platte, Neb., who had a different take on the competition. “The only color here is green,” he said. “That’s the color of money.”
Besides national titles, children ages 9 to 18 compete through Friday to get their swine in the “sale,” where the animals can sell for thousands of dollars.
Lacci Cunningham, 16, of Plainville, Kan., was busy guiding one of her two competition swine through a maze of fences. The pig, named Ruby, was in no mood to cooperate. Taps on the jowls with a plastic rod, the usual mode of steering, were ignored.
Lacci, a petite girl, used her knees to manhandle the swine back to its stall. She was one of dozens of girls competing in the swine show. Gender at the stock show is no big deal, she said. Girls compete just as strongly as boys in county and state fairs, she said.
Unlike Tye, she names her pigs. Besides Ruby, Lacci brought Delilah to Denver this week. Both are bound to end up as pork, she conceded.
“Yeah, that part is hard,” she said, looking at her pigs. “You get attached to them.”
Staff Writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
