Eleven piglets born at County Fairgrounds
Special to the OBSERVERArticle Photos
Timing is everything and one of the Chautauqua County Fair's female swine picked a perfect time to have her litter.
The sow gave birth on Saturday to 11 piglets according to Fair Board member and agriculture committee chairman Lawrence Brown. The owner is Cleo Nixon of Panama.
"The piglets will be with their mother throughout fair week for all fairgoers to see," Brown said. "It is exciting to see for those who have never witnessed the natural nurturing and growth of farm animals firsthand."
The Chautauqua County Fair runs through Sunday, July 27.
"We have lots of entertainment and great shows, but our fair still promotes agriculture first and foremost," Brown said. "We are an agricultural - and a family - fair.
"Having this litter of piglets born at the start of fair week, right here on the fairgrounds, re-emphasizes what the Chautauqua County Fair is all about."
Pay-one-price tickets to the Fair at the gates cost $8 per person Monday-Thursday and $9 Friday-Sunday. The admission for senior citizens, 62 years of age an older, is 50% off the gate ticket price any day.
"We use to have just one day devoted to senior citizens," said Fair Board member and director of the promotions and public relations committee, Randall J. Brown. "The problem was that particular day could to be too hot, too humid or too windy or stormy for too many seniors. Now they can pick the day they feel comfortable coming to the Fair and still get the very best ticket price available."
He said a lot of seniors will be at the fairgrounds during this coming week to show their grandchildren how it was "back in the day" when very hard field work and the daily grind of caring for farm animals provided the food for an emerging nation called America.
"Plentiful food - which Americans have come to expect - doesn't come from a grocery store," Brown explained.
"It comes from the farmland of our country and our county, and the farm families who work it."
Their efforts are on full display in the Stewart Dudley Farm Museum, Floral Hall and the many animal barns from July 21-27 at the Chautauqua County fairgrounds, Central Avenue, Dunkirk - NYS (I-90) Thruway Exit 59 (Dunkirk-Fredonia.) All event information is available at www.chautauquacountyfair.org or by calling the Fair office at 366-4752.
