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Iowa pork queen lends sow a hand to deliver big piglet

Ag/Outdoor, News

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.”

In this Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2019 photo provided by Sandy Greiner shows her granddaughter, Gracie Greiner, the 2019 pork queen of the Iowa Pork Producers Association pulling a piglet from a sow in labor while wearing her tiara at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa. (Courtesy Sandy Greiner via AP)

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.