Out of a record 42 ‘best of the best’ hog carcasses entered in the Pork Quality Competition at the Brandon Hog & Livestock Show December 11, 2019, Deerboine Colony, located 20 miles west of Brandon, MB walked away with the Grand Champion trophy and a cash prize of $5,000. Barrickman Colony came in second, taking home $3,000, while Aspenheim Colony came in third with a $2,000 prize. The pork from these three entries went to Samaritan House in Brandon.

Michael Wurtz is the Hog Boss at the Deerboine Colony, the Grand Champion trophy holders for 2019. The judge of this year’s competition, Dr. Bob McKay, expressed how the pork quality had improved since the last competition in Brandon, MB two years ago. Still, Wurtz said they were not doing anything different other than the best they can do.
“No, the pigs are doing what they’ve always done. We try and ship heavier pigs now. Maybe, I haven’t seen the sheet yet, I don’t know what their weight was, but that’s about all we’re doing. It’s the same program, the same genetics, and the same grains that we raise ourselves,” he said. “We have an 800 sow set up, but we don’t quite finish everything. About two-thirds of our production goes to Maple Leaf, and the rest we sell as we can.”
Michael Wurtz said as a team; they did not expect to win first prize.
“We try and participate and have fun. We’ve done fairly well in the past and were in some of the top 10 lists. But this, it was a good feeling, too,” Wurtz said. “But we don’t put a lot of sweat into the picking of the right hog, just whatever we feel looks good.”
The judge of the 2019 Brandon Hog and Livestock Show Pork Quality Competition said back in 2017 at the last competition colour, marbling, and texture are the three significant factors that influence the desirability of pork.

McKay mentioned from the podium in Brandon this year that things have changed as far as the meat quality since the last competition two years ago.
“Well, our colour score is dropped from a Minolta score over near 52, which is borderline pale, soft, and exudative (PSE) down to 47, which is in the sweet spot for colour in this country. Our marbling is increased, which is an excellent thing,” said McKay. “Even though producers get paid for colour and marbling, we export our pork, and if the people that buy it don’t like the colour and don’t like the marbling, we don’t have an industry. The other thing that’s good is our fat depth has gone up a bit. Our Loin depth just dipped a little bit, but it’s not that bad. And we’re hitting the sweet spot for the index. Our indexes are actually going up. So what the producers are getting paid is actually a little increased. So it’s a good step in the right direction.”
Dr. McKay said the industry still has more work to do, but the beauty of this Carcass show is the evaluation of all the carcasses and producers get an idea of where their carcasses fit.

“I think maybe people paid attention to what I said in 2017, when I said, ‘Take a look at the sheets. The people that finished ahead of you find out where they got their breeding stock from and go and get breeding stock from those people.’ And hopefully, that’s what they’re doing.”
As he said in 2017, when it comes to the consumer, there is a difference between them tasting and looking.

“We did a study years ago where we looked at the meat, and we put it in the display case. And people shied away from marbling, they shied away from the darker pork,” said Dr. McKay. They went to lighter pork because they thought it was from a younger animal, darker pork was from an older animal, and they didn’t want the fat from the marbling. But when we had these people evaluate the meat by cooking it and eating it, they all liked the darker pork; they all loved the marbled pork. And that’s what we’ve got to look at. You know, we’re so conditioned that we don’t want to eat fat that we cut our throats, in a way, because we’re not eating the proper meat and we’re not looking at what we’re supposed to be buying.” •
— By Harry Siemens