Wendy HallShine those belt buckles and polish those boots, because Cal Poly’s Western Bonanza Junior Livestock Show returns for its 25th anniversary on the Central Coast. The free event will be held at the Paso Robles Event Center Feb. 13 to 15.
Western Bonanza, the largest student-run livestock show in the country, started as a senior project in 1985 by Cal Poly alumnus Mark Reichle. The first show had approximately 100 head of cattle and since then, it has continued to expand. This year, almost 400 exhibitors from 20 counties in California and from out of state are competing, making it the biggest show yet.
“It’s grown from just a senior project to a class which currently has 75 students and 26 chairmen and management positions, so over 100 kids are part of it,” agricultural science graduate student and Western Bonanza intern Shannon Aguilar said.
The management team begins planning for the show in the fall and is then joined by the students enrolled in Livestock Show Management, ASCI 212. The class contains students from all colleges and experience levels.
“We have a variety of majors – business, crop science, people that have never touched an animal before, and people that have been showing cattle or goats for years,” agricultural science senior and Western Bonanza marketing manager Megan Brownell said.
Western Bonanza intern and animal science senior Wyatt Scott agreed, saying that a major reason that students enroll in the class is to learn how a livestock show runs.
“To be part of Western Bonanza, you don’t have to be competitive and to be a part of the management team, you don’t have to have a background in any kind of livestock at all,” Scott said. “The whole point of the class is to learn these different programs. There’s a lot of kids in the class who had never done it and they say ‘Wow, that’s pretty neat.'”
According to animal science sophomore Tricia Harlan, not only are there a variety of majors involved, but there are also numerous ways to be involved with Western Bonanza.
“It’s cool how the students get to be involved and how there’s such a big range of different opportunities in Western Bonanza that it kind of matches whatever you’re into,” said Harlan, who is the group’s media and publicity chairman. “If you were really involved in showing beef cattle, then you can be on the beef committee, but let’s say that you were never involved with animals at all and came from a city background, you can always work on entries and turning in entries for the show, or media and publicity.”
Exhibitors at Western Bonanza are between 9 and 21 years old and show goats, sheep, swine, steers and heifers. Aside from monetary and material prizes at stake, exhibitors compete for points awarded from the California Junior Livestock Association (CJLA) which they will accumulate throughout the show season. CJLA is a scholarship-based program, which encourages and rewards junior livestock exhibitors.
What sets Western Bonanza apart from other junior livestock shows is its A and B show format. In most shows, animals will only be seen by one judge, but with the two-show format, two judges will evaluate each animal, allowing exhibitors to earn double points towards CJLA.
“There’s a saying in show world, ‘It’s that judge’s opinion in that hour in that minute,’ and all that can change if those animals go to the next ring,” Brownell explained. “It’s a really neat opportunity from an audience prospective to evaluate a group of animals and then understand and take into consideration another judge’s perspective of why they appreciate that bone structure versus this muscle type.”
The show opens on Friday with a fitting contest in which exhibitors form teams to fit, or groom, an animal as best they can in 30 minutes. Saturday and Sunday, the judges evaluate the animals and prizes are awarded to those deemed best in their class.
For some exhibitors, Western Bonanza has come full circle from parents to children. According to Brownell, some families have a parent who competed in the first show and now have children competing this year.
Since 1985 it has gained a reputation as a quality student-run show and has become a brand that people across the country recognize.
“Western Bonanza isn’t just known in California,” Aguilar said. “Its just a big circle where people are always saying ‘I saw someone wearing a Western Bonanza jacket in Texas’ or ‘Wasn’t that the lamb that won this class from WB?’ It just continues.”
According to agricultural business junior and the group’s corporate sponsor manager Kirk Kimmelshue, Western Bonanza’s 25th anniversary is a testament to how much the show has grown over the years.
“We’ve all seen a lot of shows come and go over the last 25 years so the fact that this is still rolling is what sets us apart from other shows,” Kimmelshue said.
“The thing that makes the 25th anniversary so good is that we keep building every year.”
“It’s really one of Cal Poly’s hidden treasures,” Brownell said. “The agriculture college is the second largest next to engineering and this is one of our best student programs that we offer.”