our youth: AG STARS
Cole and the Fine Swine
Brock student Cole Thomason loves to show his
award-winning pig Charlotte
By MELISSA MOORMAN
H
96
e plays baseball, golf, chess,
likes math and has had quite a
run this year with his pig, Charlotte,
winning either grand champion or
reserve champion in five of the past
seven shows. Brock third-grader
Cole Thomason has only been
showing animals for the past two
years, according to his dad, Bryan.
Cole added to his responsibilities
by purchasing a mini-Australian
shepherd with some of his winnings
from the Parker County Youth Live
Stock Show.
“Ultimately, the money he wins
is for college, but we gave him
some of the money to do something
significant and he bought a puppy,”
said Bryan Thomason.
“His name is Finn,” said Cole.
“He barks at the pigs. We walk
around and stuff like that. He sleeps in my room,
but in a cage.”
Showing pigs is a tradition that Cole picked
up from his mother’s family. Laci, Cole’s mother,
began showing pigs at age four. She and her sister
Leah paid their way through college showing pigs.
Laci and Leah’s dad, Mike Woodruff, is a long-time
breeder of pigs.
“Whenever my wife wasn’t able to show
anymore, my father-in-law couldn’t wait until we
had kids so we could have a kid that could show
pigs. Once he was able to show it just took off. I
showed horses and I roped and showed cutting
horses. I chose to stop doing that and chose to show
pigs since it was a family tradition, so I’m just learn-
ing; I’m learning to feed and learning to pick them,”
Bryan said.
This year, Cole has taken on meat judging with
Brock 4H. It’s something he practices weekly. “One
of my friends told me about meat judging,” he said.
When asked what makes for a good piece of meat,
he said, “You don’t want too much fat on the meat
because you’ll just have to cut off all that fat and
just throw it away.”
When asked what made Charlotte such a
successful show pig, Cole said, “The way that we’ve
been feeding it or the way that we’ve been walking
it.”
His favorite show was the Dallas State Fair where
he got to see Big Tex, ride some rides and have
nachos. “I’ve learned a lot about pigs,” said Cole.
One thing he learned about Charlotte is that she
likes marshmallows. Cole uses them to get Charlotte
to load into the trailer. Charlotte is named after
the spider in “Charlotte’s Web,” a book that Cole
has read. Cole chose Charlotte himself, said his
dad, because his parents wanted him to have some
ownership from the very beginning.
“He would help me feed, he whip trained it,
[and] he worked to clean its pen. He did all of that
and the pig has been phenomenal,” said Thomason.
“It means a lot to me, this FFA stuff, because it
teaches them responsibility. To lose gracefully and
to win gracefully. Not being a sore winner or a sore
loser. We try to teach them it’s OK to lose,” said
Thomason.