Iowa pork queen lends sow a hand to deliver big piglet
August 16th, 2019 by Ric Hanson
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A piglet born at the Iowa State Fair has been touched by royalty. The 2019 pork queen for the Iowa Pork Producers Association, Gracie Greiner, kept her tiara atop her head as she reached inside a laboring sow Tuesday and removed the piglet at the fair’s Animal Learning Center. The 18-year-old lives a few miles outside Washington, a small eastern Iowa town, where her family breeds pigs to show at the county and state levels. She told The Des Moines Register that “helping pull pigs has come to be one of my favorite parts of the process.”
This piglet was big and one of the last ones the sow delivered, which Greiner says meant the sow already was pretty tired. Her dad, Shaun Greiner, told The Associated Press on Friday that his daughter is about to start classes at Iowa State University in Ames and intends to major in animal science, with an eye toward going to veterinary school someday.