Farmscape for December 13, 2013
A Brandon area Hutterite Colony has claimed the top award at the 2013 Hog Days Brandon Pork Quality Competition.
A total of 34 pork carcasses from 17 Manitoba Hutterite Colonies made up the field of entries for the 2013 Pork Quality Competition held yesterday in conjunction with Hog Days Brandon.
Dr. Bob McKay, one of the judges of this year's competition, notes the quality of entries is going up.
Clip-Dr. Bob McKay-Hog Days Brandon:
We have the basic measures of fat depth, loin depth and weight that determines the index which determines index points and yield points.
We look at the hot carcass weight itself to see if they're too heavy or too light.
It's basically like Goldilocks, if you remember the story.
This bed is too soft, this bed is too hard, this bed is just right.
We want the carcasses in the just right category for weight.
Then we look at the meat quality measures of Minolta color score which is an objective measure color score, texture, marbling which is the degree of intramuscular fat in the meat, we look at three scores in the belly, the texture, the ratio and the distribution, we look at the loin eye area and that's pretty much it for this evaluation.
This is probably the first year where the lowest score was over 50 points out of 100.
In the past we've had disqualifications that have taken down the scoring quite a bit but this is the first one that I can recall of all the shows I've done, whether it's Winter Fair or Hog Days, where we've had everybody over 50 points.
I think the lowest score was 51 and the first place score was 79 and a half so there's a very tight range for 34 carcasses which is really good.
It means overall our carcass merit is going up which is very good.
The years top winners included Spring Valley Colony near Brandon with the Champion carcass, Barickman Colony near Cartier placing second and Rolling Acres Colony near Eden taking third.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council