'Pigs are Pretty'

“Pigs are pretty” is an often-used tagline of the annual Pre­ble County Pork Fes­ti­val, held every year in Sep­tem­ber at the Pre­ble County Fair­grounds in Eaton.
This year the fes­ti­val will be held Sept. 15–16, and will be packed with ven­dors from all over the United States; yummy food with sig­na­ture pork chops; hog butcher­ing demon­stra­tion; pig races; a grand parade, and a National Trail High School FFA sow and lit­ter exhibit.
But why pigs?
Those who know the his­tory of the Pork Fes­ti­val can tell you that “hog raisin’” has been a major part of Pre­ble Coun­tians’ lives for many years. After World War II, there was a rather large decline in demand for lard and fat prod­ucts, and Pre­ble County felt the impact. Pre­ble County was at that time one of the top six pork pro­duc­ers in the state. Pre­ble is still in the top 10 in the state: in 2010, the county sat in the num­ber 10 spot.
After the decline of the pork indus­try, in 1946 Pre­ble County became home of “Swine Improve­ment in Amer­ica,” thanks to the accom­plish­ments of Wilbur Bruner, who was at the time the Pre­ble County Exten­sion Agent.
The fes­ti­val began with a board made up of 12 hus­band and wife teams, one from each of Preble’s 12 town­ships.
The fes­ti­val now car­ries the same tra­di­tions, with efforts toward pro­mo­tion of the Pork indus­try. Through­out the years, the Pre­ble County Pork Fes­ti­val Board has helped make improve­ments to the fair­grounds, such as the con­struc­tion of Bruner Arena, where the swine are housed dur­ing the fair, and the Expo Build­ing, where steer are housed dur­ing the fair.
For more infor­ma­tion about the his­tory of the Pork Fes­ti­val, visit www.porkfestival.org.
Even though Pre­ble County’s ties to pigs have been mostly about pro­duc­tion of pork prod­ucts such as pork chops, bacon, ham, and so on, what con­sumers may not know is the over­all nature and other uses a pig serves.
If you were to ask an out­sider to the pig indus­try, “what is the first thing you could say about a pig?” the typ­i­cal answers would be they smell, they are dirty, or “bacon.” If you would ask me, I would say they are one of the most inter­est­ing ani­mals in the live­stock world.
If you were dri­ving past a pig farm on a bright sunny day, you would most likely see a pig cov­ered in mud. Ever won­dered why? Well there is a per­fectly good rea­son: pigs do not have sweat glands and can­not cool them­selves like other ani­mals would, so the mud acts like a sun­screen and helps keep them cooled down — and helps pro­tect the skin, because they can also get sun­burned.
When a pig gets sun­burned, its skin becomes red, just as a human’s does, how­ever sun­burn affects young pigs more than older ones. Sun­burn, in a severe case, can also cause an expect­ing sow to lose her lit­ter.
Pigs are the fourth-smartest of all ani­mals, with the chim­panzee tak­ing the num­ber one spot. On account of their intel­li­gence, pigs are able to pick up a trick they are taught, and house-train more quickly than a dog. They can even learn their names in a week.
Like most dogs, pigs are also very socia­ble. If you see two pigs lying together, it shows a bond between the two. When you hear two pigs grunt­ing at one another, it is their way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Pigs in gen­eral will form a tight bond with each other – and can even form that same type of bond with other species of ani­mals.
When you hear that ever com­mon phrase, ‘every­thing but the squeal’ used, the intended mean­ing is that every part of a pig can be used for some­thing, whether it is for human con­sump­tion or med­ical advance­ment.
More and more hos­pi­tal and med­ical facil­i­ties have turned to mak­ing use of the pig to help save lives.
Burn vic­tims are now hav­ing pig skin used on them to cover their own skin — to help aid in the process of heal­ing the dam­aged skin. Pig skin, how­ever, has not been suc­cess­fully grafted onto humans, because human bod­ies will reject it.
But the pos­si­bil­ity of actu­ally being able to do this suc­cess­fully is in the near future, accord­ing to researchers. Japan­ese sci­en­tists have found a pos­si­ble way by using pigs that have been genet­i­cally altered with human genes. Cur­rently, researchers say there is less of a rejec­tion with the altered pig skin, and with more research, it could be pos­si­ble in the future.
In 1968, Dr. Ross of Lon­don, Eng­land made the first attempt of using a pig heart valve in a human heart. Unfor­tu­nately the heart only remained func­tional for a few min­utes. Ever since then, sur­geons from all over the world have been using pig valves for repairs, with the first suc­cess­ful case com­pleted in 1975. A pig heart valve used inside a human has a life span of around 10 years, before it nor­mally has to be replaced, accord­ing to med­ical offi­cials.
So the next time you see a smelly pig, or think bacon, think about all the awe­some things a pig has to offer you and know it could one day save your life. Some­day a pig could make the dif­fer­ence between life and death for you or a fam­ily member.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Sep 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.