Hogs shown by Santa Rosa High students take top honors at Sonoma County Fair

Santa Rosa High School’s FFA program made a strong showing this year at the Sonoma County Fair’s swine judging and auction, bringing home most of the honors in its categories, including top hog.

Gus Christianson, a Santa Rosa High junior, emerged victorious in the judging ring Wednesday when his crossbred hog Megan was named Supreme Champion.

On Friday, the cream-colored hog became the first animal to enter the ring at the market swine auction. She sold for $12 a pound, significantly above the market price of 55 cents a pound.

The buyer, Helm & Sons Amusements of Colton, in San Bernardino County, is the fair’s carnival operator. The sale price totaled $3,060.

Christianson, 16, a junior varsity basketball player for the Panthers last season, said he was stunned when the hog judge gave Megan the top award.

“That’s crazy,” he recalled thinking. “It was great.”

In all, Santa Rosa High FFA students won 10 of the 16 possible FFA awards for various champion and reserve champion swine breeds.

The 4-H members compete in separate categories, but each organization’s top hog competes for the title of Supreme Champion. For the past six years, the animals of 4-H members had won that award.

Indeed, in 13 years Santa Rosa High agriculture instructor Lisa Piehl has never had a student whose hog was named Supreme Champion.

“We were very blessed,” Piehl said of the this year’s swine judging results.

Santa Rosa High students this year entered 37 hogs at the fair. Of those, 34 were raised on campus in the school’s animal barn and facilities, said Piehl, who is one of three ag instructors there. The facilities give city kids the chance to raise farm animals and show them at the fair.

About 250 Santa Rosa High students take at least one ag class and become part of FFA, she said.

On Friday, the fair auctioneers were slated to sell 319 hogs. The poultry auction followed in the afternoon.

The Junior Livestock Auctions began a week ago with the sale of lambs, rabbits and goats, and will end at 6 p.m. today with the beef sale.

For Christianson, this year’s victory was sweeter because Megan this spring suffered a bad cut in her “left ham,” or hindquarter. Christianson’s brother Chas, a fellow FFA member, and he tended the wound and helped the animal heal.

The best part of the experience was “the relationship” of working with the hog, he said.

Asked what he would do with the sale proceeds, Christianson replied, “Put all of it in the bank.”

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.