When you have a heat index hovering near triple digits, it can be uncomfortable for anybody at the fair, but what about the animals?
High heat can be harmful to most farm animals, but for hogs, it can be dangerous and even deadly. That is because they don’t have any sweat glands and don’t have a way to get rid of that excess heat. So that means fans and plenty of water to make sure they stay cool in and outside of the show arena.
Besides watching out for their own animal, those in the hog barn are helping keep others’ pigs safe too when the mercury starts to rise.
“It is like a thing you need to be mentally prepared for,” says Adrianna Rutherford. “Like when we were bringing them in for weigh-ins, I had to tell a person they had to put their pig in the wash rack because they were panting pretty bad and if you touched them, they were really really warm so they needed it.”
Rutherford says that even when they are competing, there are spray bottles in the arena for the hogs to make sure they don’t overheat while they are before the judges.
