The Alabama Cattlemen’s Association had a busy weekend focusing on youth in the cattle industry. We caught up with Erin Beasley with the ACA to learn more.
“Well, it’s a great weekend to highlight youth and outstanding young people in our state. Friday night we were very fortunate the Alabama Cattlemen’s Foundation did host its annual scholarship banquet, which is just a real milestone type event for us. This year we awarded over $160,000 to over 150 students. And so all of those students have a connection to the Cattlemen’s Association because they have to have some type of membership through a parent or grandparent in order to be eligible for a scholarship and so the foundation has grown tremendously over the last few years and the ability to present those scholarships was really a great thing for us,” said Beasley.
“Then the next day we were able to be back with some youth and we held the very first youth cattle working contest that we’ve had in Alabama. And so I’d like to give a big amount of credit to Bailey Watson on our team. This is something she grew up doing as a young person in Virginia and brought it to Alabama for us. This was the first year of the contest and she had five teams compete and we have the first state champion cattle working team that will be going on to the national contest. And so again, another activity for our young people to get involved in the cattle industry. This one can be for any kid. They don’t have to own cattle. They don’t have to have any background, but if they can put together a team of three and have an interest in learning more about safely and properly working a set of cattle, then this is the contest for them,” said Beasley.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.