Fit pig a hit with the ladies

An all-female team of serious hog breeders weren’t mucking around by exercising their prized pig with regular walks and swims ahead of his biggest competition yet.

Stephen Porking wore a custom-made red lead as he took regular walks around his Canterbury home, usually favouring the 2-kilometre track down to the nearby creek for a dip.

It was toning him up, and familiarising him with other people, that Stephen’s owners believe helped him ham it up for the judge and win the Supreme Champion award at the country’s premier agricultural show yesterday.

The 100-kilogram boar took the top title in the Supreme Champion

Pedigree competition.

‘‘We train him by walking him like a dog … all these new smells and scents on walks, he loves it,’’ co-owner Catherine Sharpin said at the New Zealand Agricultural Show in Christchurch.

Sharpin, Stephen’s main carer from a group dubbed the The Pork Pullers, said she was inspired to enter after failing to see women try their hand in the heavily maledominated category. She joined up with her twin sister, Emma Sharpin, and friend Annabel Askin in 2017, and had a shock win with a unlikely Berkshire pig. Confident they had found their niche, they tracked down pedigree Berkshire lineage in the South Island in March, forking out about $200 for two more rare piglets who they named Stephen Porking and Piggy Smalls.

Catherine Sharpin, who lives between Ashburton and Chertsey, kept the new additions at a property near her home, visiting them every day to check they were doing well and taking Stephen for weekly wanders.

‘‘We brush them, oil them, wash them … we get to make their life happier … you think grab a pig, feed it up and put it in the show, but we put a lot more time into ours.’’

Judge Paul Peck said Stephen immediately stood out in a pool of ‘‘very high quality’’ pigs.

‘‘I’ve been amongst pigs for 50 years and he took my eye first out the pen. I knew it would be very hard to look past him.’’

‘‘Stephen will leave here and go and serve some ladies, he’s a lucky man, but Piggy Smalls will be off to the butcher,’’ Sharpin said. ‘‘What can I say, everyone says Stephen’s just a good-looking pig.’’