Youth Show Swine: Selection and Judging
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EmailMarch 30, 2026
Choosing the right pig is an important first step in your project. In this video, we’ll help you understand what to look for, including structure, muscle, and overall balance. We’ll also explain how judges evaluate pigs in the show ring so you can better understand what they’re looking for and how to prepare.
Video Transcript
Let’s Look at Swine Project Selection and Judging
A key part of any 4-H animal science project is selection of your project animal, and it is important to understand the basics of what to look for when evaluating potential project animals. Let’s review the basics of selection and evaluation for swine!
When evaluating swine, there are three main overarching traits that we select for:
- Structure
- Muscling
- Balance
All three are important, but how we prioritize them depends on the type of project. For breeding projects, we want to emphasize structural correctness and functionality. For market projects, heavy muscling is key but structure is still very important.
Let’s break down what each of these terms means.
Structure
- Structural correctness is essential to achieve the highest quality carcass.
- Market swine should be big-boned, strong-topped, and correct in their angles.
- The front and rear pasterns should be set at about a 45-degree angle, and the hocks should be set to approximately 20 degrees. These angles help to eliminate unnecessary pressure or strain on the joints.
- A structurally sound hog will travel with ease.
Muscling
- There are five main places that we can evaluate muscle: the forearm, blade, top, loin, and ham.
- A heavy muscled hog will be expressive and shapely in its muscle pattern when looking at the blade and loin from a rear view. Hogs should be heavily muscled from all viewpoints, but especially when viewing from behind and over the top side.
- From the side, the boldness of rib in a hog is a good indicator of natural width and volume of muscle.
- Also, swine that are wide based and big boned will carry more “product” than those who are narrow based and frail in their bone work.
Balance
- This term refers to the combination of structural correctness, muscle, and finish.
- A hog that is correctly balanced will be proportional and pleasing to look at on the profile.
- They will be tall-fronted, level topped, level hipped, and will have a clean underline and jowl.
When selecting your project animal, be sure to evaluate them on all of these factors. The goal is to select structurally correct animals with good muscling potential so they will grow into successful market hog projects for you to show at the fair and high quality carcasses for consumers to enjoy.
