By Paul Hammel
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

STATE FAIR PARK -- Years ago, he was the unquestioned king of fairgrounds' attractions.

"Where's the biggest boar?'' used to be the most-asked question at the Nebraska State Fair.

This year, a supersize swine is grunting his way back into the limelight.

"Teddy Bear,'' an 800-pound pile of pork chops, has claimed the purple ribbon in the Nebraska State Fair's "biggest pig'' contest.

Teddy, owned by Eldon Morgan of Broken Bow, Neb., has ears the size of baseball mitts and a back as big as a horse. He grunted somewhere south of the bass clef when Morgan scratched behind his ears in his special pen at the 4-H Sheep and Swine Barn.

Teddy Bear was the only entry in a contest that was resurrected by fair officials a couple of years ago.

The contest was a popular fair attraction through the 1980s but died out. It was resurrected as part of an overall push to include more agriculture displays in the fair.

Because of a decline in hog producers and the extensive use of artificial insemination -- which allows sperm collected from one boar to impregnate thousands of sows each year -- there are very few boars around, much less humongous hams like Teddy.

"Artificial insemination has replaced the need to have boars around,'' said Barney Cosner, the executive director of the Nebraska State Fair and a veteran of livestock shows.

The typical market hog weighs about 280 pounds these days, with boars running 400 to 500 pounds.

"People would have to feed for this (big pig contest),'' said Doug Brand, a Fair Board member from Seward. "They just don't have these animals around anymore.''

Morgan, who works at a cattle feedlot in Broken Bow, raises show pigs on the side.

He purchased Teddy Bear, now 2 1/2, when he was 9 months old from breeder Tom Johnson of Scribner, Neb., to provide a boar for his show pigs.

Teddy, a pure-bred spot pig, was big when purchased but has ballooned in weight, thanks to a steady diet of corn and feed, and good exercise in his half-acre pen.

"He can eat a five-gallon bucket of feed a day,'' Morgan said, adding that he plans to bring Teddy back to next year's fair.

"I think he's got some room to expand,'' he said.

Teddy will need to if he wants to compete with the big boars in the neighborhood.

At the Iowa State Fair this year, a Yorkshire boar weighing 1,259 pounds set a record in the big pig contest there.

At the Minnesota State Fair, worries that no big boars would be entered were dashed in a big way when a 1,240-pound porker named Squeaky showed up unexpectedly.

The good news for Teddy Bear is that both big boars were 4 years old, about a year and a half older than Nebraska's reigning big pig.