Jason Care of Manitoba Hog Grading had little to complain about judging the entries of the 2022 Royal Manitoba Winter Fair (RMWF) pork quality competition.
Of the above-average 16 carcasses entered, a quarter had broken the 80-point mark, out of a total of 111 points possible.
Colour was, in general, good, ranging consistently more to the midpoint of the six-point index used to gauge the colour grade of a loin. Entrant carcasses were also bigger than he remembers years ago, the veteran grader said, and more of that mass was actually meat.
Read Also
Mazergroup’s Bob Mazer dies
Mazergroup’s Bob Mazer, who helped grow his family’s company into a string of farm equipment dealerships and the main dealer for New Holland machinery in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, died July 6 from cancer.
Twelve years ago, he mused, the average finishing weight of a competition might be 98 kilograms. Looking at competition entries, he figures that number’s now close to 103 to 104 kilograms.
“Now the producers are getting the different genetics… a huge part of it is the feed that they choose and they just know when to add the right amount (of something) to balance them out so that they’re not gaining a lot of fat,” he said.
It was a grand return for the pork quality competition, a mainstay of the annual Royal Manitoba Winter Fair, held in Brandon each year. The fair is one of three agricultural fairs put on annually by the Provincial Exhibition of Manitoba.
RMWF 2022 also marked only the second large-scale in-person event organized by the exhibition since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Ag Ex, the exhibition’s typical autumn fair, ran with a reduced schedule last fall.
Winners
If the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair was back, so was Barrickman Colony, located just northwest of St. François Xavier.
The winners of this year’s pork quality competition are no strangers to the podium in pork quality competition, having found success at the 2019 Prairie Livestock Expo and 2020 Brandon Hog and Livestock Show.
“It feels awesome,” Mike Hofer said of the newest win. “We’ve done it a few times already and honestly didn’t expect it, but here we are.”
The winning offering gained a total 88 points out of a possible 111, with a 97.5-kilogram carcass.
Barrickman Colony took first place by only two points, edging out Sprucewood Colony near Brookdale, which earned 86 points for its 105.2-kilogram carcass.
Third-place Cypress Colony, from Cypress River, narrowly missed a place as reserve champion, coming in one point behind with 85 points.
“This pork quality competition highlights the ability of producers like you to finish these pigs to the highest standard that we have,” Care told producers during the competition’s awards ceremony. “It shows people how you can basically finish these pigs and meet these tight parameters and measurements that we have.”
Community
Each carcass is now on its way back into the community, according to fair co-chair Wayne Buhr. Entries will be used for training purposes in Assiniboine Community College’s culinary arts program, and are eventually bound for local food banks.
In another return of tradition, prize money will also be split between the winner and a charity of their choice.
Cypress Colony opted to split prize money with Winnipeg’s Ronald McDonald House, while Sprucewood Colony will be sending funds to its local hospital, Carberry Plains Health Centre.
Barrickman Colony, however, opted for a charity outside of the medical sphere. Prize money from this year’s pork quality competition win will go to HEART, the Hutterian Emergency Aquatic Response Team — a charitable search-and-recovery dive team based out of Morris.
The rescue dive team was “something different,” Hofer said.
“We always do Children’s Hospital in Winnipeg and just decided to do something different this year,” he said.
