The opening day of the Iowa State Fair ended with three tremendously big animals: the Big Boar, Super Bull and Big Ram.
Here’s just how big they were.
Zoomer the boar barely beats out Red by 6 pounds
The biggest boar at the 2026 Iowa State Fair has a bit of an attitude problem. He’s grumpy. He’s growly. And he weighs 1,246 pounds.
That’s a mere 6-pound difference from the second-place boar, who came in at 1,240 pounds. The announcer of the fair’s Big Boar competition on Thursday, Aug. 13, said he’s never seen the scales come in that close before.
Todd Schuler from Atlantic has been raising his first-place pig, Zoomer, for six years. But his time in the pig pen started long before that. He’s been mucking about with them for going on 60 years, and decided to enter the contest for the first time in 2025. Schuler’s pig missed first place by just 8 pounds.
“It [the contest] was just something I wanted to do,” Schuler said. “I’ve been raising pigs all my life and I thought it’d be kind of neat to do and try before I quit.”
Zoomer has a pen to himself. He eats rolled corn soaked in water every day, along with a dozen eggs. Schuler estimates that the cost of the eggs alone is now over $700.
The night before Zoomer stepped onto the official state fair scale, Schuler said he weighed the pig himself, and he came in at 1,360 pounds.
“You know, they move and they’ll lose some weight,” he said.
As for the second-place winner of the Big Boar competition, Red, this not-little piggie comes from Olin, raised by Teri Bell and her husband at Teri Bell Farms. He eats 25 pounds of corn and soybeans a day, along with fresh-cut grass and marshmallows.
“He is an extremely lazy boar,” Bell said. “He likes to eat and sleep.”
The Bells bred pigs with fast-growing genetics in order to win the contest. Red is only 2-and-a-half years old.
“If he would’ve just drank before he went in, he might’ve made it,” Bell said.
Super Bull ‘Big E’ wins with care from fifth-generation cattle raisers
T.J. and Laurin Goecke have raised cattle since they were born. Or at least, they remember being a part of the barn since they were in kindergarten.
“You’ve got to get up, feed the cows. They depend on you every single day. There’s no days off,” said Laurin Goecke. “I think showing livestock is a great way for children to learn responsibility and work ethic.”
The Goecke family in State Center competitively shows cattle, heifers and steers, making the siblings the fifth generation to carry on the work. The winning bull, Big E, came in at 3,026 pounds, but he wasn’t originally bred to be a big bull. He is actually one of Laurin Goecke’s retired show heifers, and previously won the Minnesota State Fair Open Show.
However, Big E started getting too big to breed, and eventually hurt himself, leading to his retirement. Their dad had the idea to enter him into the Super Bull contest because of his calm demeanor.
“There are 100% bigger bulls out there, but are they calm enough to come to the fair, get on and off the trailer, and be around people for ten days?” Laurin Goecke said.
The siblings have been close to winning first place before, but this is the first time they’ve been in the champions’ aisle.
“Feels pretty good,” T.J. Goecke said.
Lucia Cheng is a service and trending reporter at the Des Moines Register. Contact her at lcheng@gannett.com or 515-284-8132.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Meet Zoomer and Big E, the biggest animals at the Iowa State Fair
Reporting by Lucia Cheng, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Lucia Cheng, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
