While many teenage boys get stuck into gaming after school, you'll find Fletcher Keen in a paddock.
Last year a pig named 'Ashley Bloomfield' won the 14-year-old Cantabrian 'Best Boar Over 5 months And Under 8 Months' at NZ's national agriculture show.
Fletcher Keen with his pets Piglet and Bacon Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
Fletcher's family runs a small sheep stud in the rural community of Springston.
He and his pigs are a familiar sight at Canterbury A&P shows where he's been winning ribbons and rosettes for years.
Although Fletcher is now president of the Springston Swine Society, he hasn't always been focused on pigs - the first animals he owned were a couple of ducks received as a Christmas present,
Over the years Fletcher says he's "drifted away" from ducks, though, in the direction of Hampshire-Landrace pigs and Suffolk rams.
Hamilton, Crispy Bacon, Tractor, Donald Trump and Treseme are some of the prize pigs Fletcher has reared in the past, and the two he's raising for this November's national show are named Piglet and Bacon.
Fletcher says that while he takes good care of their needs, he's learnt not to get too close to the animals. Partly because after the show it's time to "book in the home-kill guy and say goodbye".
"When we first started, the pigs were like my brothers pretty much. They followed me around everywhere and I could take them on leads…
"[For the competition] they don't have to be real friendly but friendly helps. You've really just got to feed them well and look after them well."
Before Piglet and Bacon take the stage, Fletcher will scrub them clean and rub them down with baby oil, to "make their muscles stick out".
Muscular definition is what you look for in a show pig, he says.
"Good tucker."
Nicole and Fletcher Keen Photo: Cosmo Kentish-Barnes
