Grace Marencic is about to set a Lebanon Area Fair record and what’s believed to be the first of its kind for any fair in Pennsylvania.
And she is only 8 years old.
The Tower City resident, who is a member of the Lebanon County 4-H’s Livestock Club, will have the distinction of being the first person ever to show registered Meishan (pronounced Mae-shan) hogs at a Pennsylvania-based fair, including Lebanon’s.
Marencic will show two hogs, and two “extended family” members who purchased the same breed from her parents will enter one Meishan each into the judging competition. The record-setting moment will occur during the premiere judging of the Meishan breed at the Youth Swine Show in the North Hall on Monday, July 22, beginning at 8 a.m.
“Excited, but nervous because I’m always nervous about everything,” said Marencic about her feelings heading into her first 4-H livestock show. Her mother, Mariell, said her daughter isn’t actually nervous about everything. “Yeah, I’m excited to show my kids and see how they do. And they’re super duper special.”
Meishans are special because their characteristics are quite different from other market hogs, according to Mariell. The family has five breeding sows and four breeding boars on Blue Hill Acres, their 24-acre farm.
“If we’re going to raise them for meat, it’s about 12 to 14 months,” said Mariell, who added that’s twice as long as other market hog breeds. “What we’re finding is depending on what breeding pair we use, it may actually be quicker depending on what genetics I use. But now that we’re bringing in different genetics, we’re seeing who’s growing their piglets the fastest and who we can wean the fastest as well.”
Another major difference is the rapidity in which Meishans consume feed.
“The difference between a typical market hog versus the Meishans is that the Meishans don’t sit around and eat all day,” said Mariell. “Your typical market hog will eat and eat and eat. But Meishans are very, very sedentary. They sometimes get up for breakfast but sometimes they leave their breakfast till lunch ’cause they don’t feel like getting up.”
That stark difference lengthens the time they are raised.
“They definitely are not living to eat and that’s another reason why they grow so slowly,” said Mariell. “It’s because they are very sedentary.”
That sedentary lifestyle, however, has a major impact on the quality of the meat.
“The meat from a Meishan is extremely tender, and it has fantastic marbling,” said Mariell. “There are some people that want that kind of meat and they seek that kind of meat.”
LebTown jokingly asked if their meat tastes like chicken.
“It tastes like pork,” said Mariell matter-of-factly. “What I always say is I feel when you get a farm-raised animal of any kind that I feel that it tastes how they live. It’s just different from going to the grocery store and just buying a pork chop or bacon. And it’s weird. It’s almost like you can taste how calm they were.”
That contributes to another distinguishing characteristic of Meishans.
“There’s a Wagyu cow that came from Japan and the Japanese practice is to massage the cow, talk gently to the cow and they believe that by being so calm the meat tastes differently,” said Mariell. “So I do find that to be true with the Meishans because they are so calm. They’re basically like dogs. They’ll follow you wherever you go and I do believe that being so calm does affect … the taste of the meat.”
Since the animals are so sedentary, LebTown asked Grace how she motivates them to move in the practice show ring at home.
“I kind of give them marshmallows and crackers, and then they just get so crazy that they can just walk about,” said Grace.
Grace believes this breed is easier to handle than others because they are so easygoing and friendly. “They are very, very friendly and funny,” she noted.
Mariell said that’s a conversation she’s had with her daughter when she is practicing for a show. She added that this is not only Grace’s first show, but the first for her husband Scott and her since they weren’t reared in 4-H.
“Everything goes great when you’re at home,” said Mariell. “But she was saying, ‘Well, they stop. How do I convince them to keep walking?’ Because they stop, and then they want to have a conversation and all that kind of stuff. And so I said, ‘I really don’t think when we’re at the show, being that there’s gonna be so many people there and there’s gonna be hogs all over the place, I don’t think you’ll have an issue getting them to walk because there’ll be lots of distractions in the tent.’”
Another contrast between Meishans and other breeds concerns litter size. While most market hogs can have up to 14 piglets per litter, the average is seven or eight. That number is much higher for Meishans.
“About two years ago, I think it was in March of 2022, is when we got our first pair and she was actually pregnant when we got her,” said Mariell. “Her highest litter count’s been 20 and I know the highest in the (national) association is 22.”
Grace, who aspires to become a veterinarian one day given her love of animals, is intimately involved with the hogs from the time the piglets are born.
“She’s usually right there when they farrow,” said Mariell. “She sits very quietly and lets the mom do the work, but she steps in if anything’s needed.”
Another distinguishing characteristic is the “look” of Meishans, which means “virtuous beauty” in Chinese, their native land. Their primary facial features are wave after wave of wrinkles and floppy ears.
Is it possible for an animal to be so ugly that it’s actually cute? Lebanon fairgoers can answer that question for themselves when the fair opens to the public on Saturday.
“When my husband first said, “Let’s get a Meishan, I was like, ‘Well, what do they look like?’” recalled Mariell. “He sent me a picture and I was like, ‘OK. That’s an interesting looking pig.’”
What may have been an initial double take on first blush soon turned into a love for the Meishan look. Everyone in the family is head over heels in love with the breed, according to Mariell.
“We were very selective on which pigs we brought on the farm to keep the genetics. We breed for the look. We like their wrinkly faces, we like the long ears,” said Mariell. “Other farmers that are part of this association may breed for body type. They may breed for the meat. We’ve been sharing with association members – everybody who’s in it has been sharing each other’s findings.”
Too many wrinkles can be problematic.
“Some of them, depending on their genetics, will have such a wrinkly face that they cannot see. We call it Meishan blindness,” said Mariell. “We have one, in particular, that has a lot of wrinkles and she can’t see very well. So we always make sure to put her food and water in the exact same spot. Or if we have to move her, we show her exactly where everything is so she knows.”
Sharing information is, in many ways, caring since the breed is so rare. About 200 active members of the American Meishan Breeders Association, which was founded in 2016, own just over 1,150 registered animals in the United States.
“I’m pretty deep into the association and I work very closely with a lot of the members to preserve this breed as much as we can,” said Mariell. “It is working because they were listed up until this year as critically endangered by the Livestock Conservancy and they just recently updated it to, I think, as threatened.”
LebTown asked if they are such prolific breeders, how did the species become endangered.
“Because they were strictly only in China,” answered Mariell, who said the breed was first imported into the U.S. in the late 1980s for breeding and genetic research.
“Somebody here in the United States said, ‘Hey, I found these Meishan pigs, and everyone in China raises them and they have high litters.’ So they worked very, very hard to work with the Chinese government to get them imported into the United States,” said Mariell. “Once they were imported, there were three different groups, research facilities that got them.”
Before they were released to the public, the breed was studied extensively.
“They studied their genetics, they worked on breeding and all that kind of stuff,” said Mariell. “They accomplished what they wanted to do, they learned what they wanted and eventually they dispersed them.”
Mariell is an ambassador for Meishans and plans to spread the gospel during the Lebanon Area Fair. Three of their sows are pregnant, and she hopes that other 4-H Livestock Club members are interested in raising the docile animals from the one litter that’s been set aside to propagate the breed locally.
“We have three sows expecting (to birth) in the next couple of weeks, so we’ll have three litters on the ground, which will be the most we will have had at the same time,” said Mariell. “One of those three litters we are reserving for any 4-H kids who want to show Meishans.”
Grace is also an ambassador who enjoys working with them given their docile nature.
“It makes me feel kind of, like, happy that I have such a nice kind of pig that is very gentle to me,” said Grace. “When they’re older, they don’t push me around. But they’re just what I like, and I like ones like this that follow me around.”
Many hog breeds are known to get aggressive as they get older, and that is demonstrated in the show ring when the ornery and highly independent animals want to do their own thing.
“One thing we always had in the back of our mind is, when you are raising pigs, especially when they get older, they can tend to be aggressive,” said Mariell, who added the family has raised other breeds for about 10 years before becoming involved with Meishans. “Having young kids, we were very cautious about letting them go in the pen with the pigs.”
There is, however, one specific occasion when Meishans become aggressive.
“They are great and they’re super easy to move. When we used to have to move the other breeds of pigs we did throughout the years, it was always an ordeal trying to move them. They’d be running all over the place, but the Meishons are just like, ‘Yeah, where are we going?’” said Mariell. “But the most painful thing is separating a breeding pair. Once you know that this sow or gilt is ready to farrow, we pull the bore out. Now you don’t have to. People say that they leave the boar there and the boar’s fine with the piglets, but we just for safety – yes, for safety measures, ‘Well said, Grace’ – pull the boar out.”
Both will continue their ambassadorship for the breed at the association’s national convention in September.
“They want Grace to present while she’s there about her journey on introducing the nation to the show world, because there’s a lot of families across the United States that want to start showing as well,” said Mariell. They want us to tell them what went well, what didn’t go well, what did the judge look at, that sort of thing. I’m not bullish about it, but I told her (Grace) I’d be right there with her. She’s nervous about it, but we’ll do great.”
As any proud mom would do, Mariell plans to document the momentous occasion as they dive deeper into the world of Meishan ownership.
“I plan on taking a million pictures, you know, while we’re there. Because on top of it being a brand new breed, it’s a brand new activity for us. My husband and I were not 4-H kids. So we know nothing and we’re just learning as we’re going,” said Mariell.
“Yep, just go with the flow,” added Grace.
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