In this blog and the next, we’re going to talk about two key components that will create a good foundation for training your hogs for showmanship. These critical points will determine how quickly you progress with training your show pigs. They’ll drastically increase your success through training and accomplishing your goals. The first critical point is separating your hogs. The second is hand feeding. In this blog we will talk about the first one.

Critical Point One:

If you’ve got several show hogs you’re going to need to separate them. It’s important to have each of your pigs in a separate pen. One reason you do this is to create a bond between you and your show pig. Ideally this means you put the pen of your showmanship pig in a separate location. This is so that your pig won’t know the other hogs exist. If you can do this, your pig will have a much stronger bond with you. The pig will build his primary trust on you, instead of other hogs. This process will create a sense of trust and loyalty that you’ll rarely see with hogs that are housed together. 

You don’t have to bring two hogs home. It’ll make life easier if you don’t. You might have been encouraged to raise multiple hogs together. The reason for this is that when two hogs are raised together, they tend to eat and grow better. But this may not actually matter if your pig is the right size to begin with. Some hogs eat well, some hogs grow well, and then some hogs don’t. They are this way no matter what you do. Having a second hog isn’t worth it most of the time. In fact, the ones that are encouraged to eat are usually the heavy eaters. These hogs already eat what they need. Keeping hogs together will destroy any control of your hog’s condition and feed intake and will eliminate most individual attention you give your hog. That includes your success at training for showmanship. If you house hogs together they will build a bond with each other. When you show up, they either won’t like you or they won’t respect you. The easiest way to avoid these issues is to only bring one hog home. Having two hogs is one thing, but housing them together is another. If you house show pigs together you’re going to need to be dedicated to taking them out at separate times and giving each pig plenty of individual attention.

I understand some showmen have a string of animals they show. It’s physically impossible to separate every single one of them by any kind of distance. For your extra show hogs, I recommend that you house them alongside each other in separate pens. This way you can at least have control of each hog’s feed intake. Young hogs can be penned together for a short time without causing issues. If you know which hog will be your showmanship hog, I would still separate him from the rest. Doing it this way will help your showmanship pig to bond with only you.

This is huge! It is very important to gather tips and tricks like these to arm you for the show ring. Knowing how to master swine and livestock showmanship is the key to success. This section comes directly from my book Show Your Way to the Top. You can get the book or my flashcard series at mastershowmanship.com/shop