Tres Pinos
– Organizers of San Benito County Fair’s Junior Livestock
Auction provided participants with a handy price calculator, but it
wasn’t very useful for bidders who wanted to get their hands on the
grand prize hog named No Deal.
Tres Pinos – Organizers of San Benito County Fair’s Junior Livestock Auction provided participants with a handy price calculator, but it wasn’t very useful for bidders who wanted to get their hands on the grand prize hog named No Deal.
The calculator shows total prices for bids ranging from $3 per pound to $5.75 per pound. No Deal, however, sold for $21 per pound. At 260 pounds, that makes him a $5,460 hog.
No Deal’s owner, 13-year-old Tres Pinos resident Marshall Hoffman, said he was shocked.
“I really didn’t expect this to happen,” he said. When asked to explain his hog’s victory, as well as his high price tag, Hoffman said, “Well, they like them lean but not too lean … I guess he was just the right shape.”
For the past three years, Hoffman has been raising four hogs annually. He takes one to the state fair, one to the Santa Cruz County Fair and two to San Benito; Hoffman’s entries into this year’s auction were Deal and No Deal.
It’s a time-consuming hobby: Hoffman said he walks the hogs twice a day, and on the weekends, he spends half a day washing, clipping and grooming them.
“You have to try to get to know them,” he said. “If you don’t, it’ll be hard to control them.”
So is it difficult for Hoffman to say good-bye to his hogs, who were delivered to the slaughterhouse yesterday?
“The first year, I got really emotional,” Hoffman said. “It’s really sad, but I got over it. I can’t take them home; my parents would kill me.”
The money Hoffman makes from the sales is being saved to help pay for his college education; he said he wants to study animation at Cal Poly, San Louis Obispo.
