At the fair: Tyre wraps up long, successful hog showing career tonight

Katie Tyre, a 2006 Slater High graduate, shows a hog at her last FFA Central District Fair Monday, July 13. After 14 years in the show ring, Tyre has won numerous awards and made even more memories and friends. (Marcia Gorrell/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

Tyre, daughter of Jim and Kathy Tyre of rural Marshall, has been showing pigs at the Saline County Fair for 14 years. Her last show will be Thursday, July 16, at the Saline County Fair Hog Show, where she will show her two gilts, "Barbie" and "Midge."

In September, she begins radiology school at Cox Medical Center in Springfield, after spending three years at Missouri State University. She will have two more years of year-round classes and work before graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in radiography from MSU.

"It's bittersweet. I'm done with this part of my life and on to another," said Tyre.

Tyre credits her pig-showing career for helping her get into the radiology program at Cox, where hundreds of applicants were interviewed for just 18 spots.

"In interview skills, you have to sell yourself in 30 seconds and you have to come up with something that they are going to remember you from and that was mine -- showing pigs," she said. "That's just that one thing that not everyone does."

In fact, taking care of her show pigs and traveling to shows across the state, Tyre said, has helped her learn social skills.

"I've met so many people I see at school now," she said, adding it helped her get to know "people I wouldn't have ordinarily met."

Working with the pigs, which she normally purchases in April and keeps until late August, has also helped teach Tyre responsibility. Each year she would have up to six show pigs at a time and spent up to five hours a day working with them during the summer.

"You get up in the morning, walk them, wash them, clean them up for the day, feed them, leave them in the barn and check on them every hour or two hours depending on how hot it is that day," she said. "At night you walk them, rinse them and then put them back in the pen and feed them again."

Despite the hard work, it is something she will miss about showing.

"I'll miss having that responsibility of something to take care of and knowing that I put all my hard work into a project. Hopefully it wins, but that's what everybody goes for," she said.

She started her 4-H career as a Clover Kid with Orearville 4-H, and showed several bottle calves before showing a heifer at age 8. It was at age 9 that Tyre started a very successful career of showing pigs.

In fact, Tyre was young when she showed the grand champion market hog at the Saline County Fair.

"I guess I was 9 or 10, when I won the county fair," she said, adding that was the last time she won grand champion market hog at the fair. However, she has won several jackpot shows, as well as reserve champion market hog at the fair.

She has also won honors at the FFA Central District Fair and has won numerous showmanship awards through the years.

One unrealized goal was to win the Missouri State Fair market hog show.

"That was always a goal to win the State Fair. I got real close but didn't quite make it though," she said. Two years ago, she showed the FFA champion barrow, which means she made it to the top four, but two other hogs were named grand champion and reserve champion.

This year, her last year eligible, she has decided not to show at the State Fair and will instead be helping out and working in the State Fair pig barn.

However, it is not the awards and championships that Tyre talks about when she mentions her favorite memories from showing at the Saline County Fair. Instead it is the "fair family," she has been part of for so many years.

"If you need anything, they are there, and they are the first ones to get excited for you if you do good," she said. "And they are the ones there holding your hand if something goes bad."

Asked about what advice she would give future exhibitors, she said, "Make sure you do it and have fun, but always remember to put all into it because at the end of the day you want to make sure that you've done everything you can to get to the top."

She also thanked all the buyers who have paid premiums for her hogs over the years. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said.

Tyre has used the money she has made to buy the next year's hogs and to help pay for her college education.

Although for now she will be concentrating on school, she said someday she would like to be part of showing again, from the parent side.

"I would love to have a family and make sure they have the same experience I had growing up," she said.

Contact Marcia Gorrell at marshallag@socket.net