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AUSTIN, Minn. — Minnesota youth from across the state brought in high quality pigs to a venue known just for that. 

The Swine Show took place July 12 at the Mower County Fairgrounds in Austin, home to Hormel's National Barrow Show. 

The first part of the fifth annual Minnesota Youth Livestock Expo was held June 27-30 at the Martin County Fairgrounds in Fairmont. That event featured over 2,000 entries by 4-H and FFA members from throughout Minnesota showcasing their beef, sheep, goats and rabbits. The expo, which allows exhibitors age 5 to 21 to show multiple animals and species, is run entirely by volunteers. 

"There's a lot of stuff that goes on in the background," said Theresa St. Germain, an executive committee member of the Minnesota Youth Livestock Expo who also works full-time for Merck Animal Health and raises cattle with her husband and father-in-law. "We're all unpaid volunteers, and we love to do this for the kids."

Minnesota Youth Livestock Expo formed in 2020 in response to pandemic cancellations of county and state fairs. Its volunteer committee is made up of 25-30 members. St. Germain has been involved since its inception in the early days of the pandemic. 

Noah Fish / Agweek

"We all know that time was a little bit trying, and we didn't want to have the kiddos lose out on an opportunity because at that time, a lot of them had their projects purchased for the year," St. Germain said. "It would have left them without any place to show off their talents, their skills and their hard work and determination."

She said the first year, the show was pulled together in two or three months. 

The Mower County Fairgrounds in Austin is known for being the site of the annual National Barrow Show, and it served as the perfect setting for the Minnesota Youth Livestock Expo's swine show, which showcased some of the state's best exhibitors. 

The swine portion of the expo is headed by volunteers Brent and Julie Vorpagel, St. Germain said. The couple also serve on the committee for , which they started to introduce a more competitive and engaging youth circuit for showing pigs. On the cattle side, there's the , where points are also accumulated from a series of shows. 

"It's a jackpot series, that a select group of shows are chosen around the state, and then you gather points and then they award high point exhibitors and entries at all those shows," St. Germain said of Minnesota Youth Swine Series. 

St. Germain said many of the exhibitors competing in the swine series throughout the summer were at the Minnesota Youth Livestock Expo show, raising the bar for the weekend's competition.  

"There's a lot of high-quality animals that will get exhibited here that have been at national shows national gilt shows," she said. "There's a junior national show going on right now, for the selective breeds, and many of them will be quite competitive there as well. So the quality runs deep here."

Noah Fish / Agweek

For a former show exhibitor (St. Germain said she used to compete in up to 15 shows a year), she said the events are as much about the networking as they are about the competition. 

"I have contacts all across the country," she said. " We always say if you're traveling to a junior national or a national show like Louisville, Denver, anything like that, and you break down on the side of the road, it's not very far that you know someone that lives close that can rescue you."

Just before 6:30 a.m., 18-year-old Preston Welling of Paynesville, Minnesota, was checking on his pig while his dad, Matt, sat in a lawn chair drinking a Pepsi with a shirt that read SHOW DAD on the front.

"They're hungry," said Matt Welling, a district seed sales manager, to the squeals coming from the barn that was just beginning to fill up with pigs. 

His son Preston will attend Oklahoma State University in the fall where he plans to study animal science. 

"I'd like to be top five in showmanship and have my pigs place as well as they can," Preston said of his goals for the show on July 12. 

He said his habits leading up to a show usually lead to good performances. 

"It's little things that I work on at home and stuff that I have to focus on from week to week," he said. "Just knowing the position of where I am compared to the pig, and how I turn."

The focus also needs to be on the pig, he said. 

"Pigs are super into their patterns, so we just have a schedule that you have to stick to," Preston said. "We're here at six because it works for us, and today, it's going to be super hot, so I figured walk and stuff early while it was still cool enough to get them out there."

Noah Fish / Agweek

Walking with Welling and gleaning some of his upper-class show wisdom was 10-year-old Colton Polzin from Darwin, Minnesota. 

"I'm hoping to get first and win the class, and hopefully go up for breed," Colton said of his goals for the show. "Hopefully top five, but (his pig) is really little, and some of these are Januarys and Decembers."

Polzin said before a show day, his pig starts feeding at 2 a.m. and eats consistently until its time to walk in the ring. 

"If she's really full then I have a better chance," Polzin said. 

Matt Welling said he used to show pigs as a kid, but the events were nothing like what his son is competing in this summer through the Minnesota Youth Swine Series, which hosted three of its 13 events at the Mower County Fairgrounds this year. 

"It works just like NASCAR," Welling said. "You go around to the shows, say 12 or however you want, but only your best seven shows count towards your overall points."

For the Welling family, it's like a vacation almost every weekend. 

"Some people go the lake in the summertime," he said. "We show animals."