The Alabama Cattlemen’s Association will be holding the AJCA Roundup in Montgomery and we caught up with Bailey Watson with ACA to learn more.
“We are actually celebrating our 20th annual AJCA Roundup. It will be held July 23rd through the 26th on the Garrett Coliseum grounds in Montgomery. Super excited as we, you know, kick off this 20th year. We got a lot of fun things planned. We have cattle shows from a market show to showmanship, a bull show, and also a breeding heifer and a bred and owned heifer show. But not only with the cattle shows, we also have our educational contest,” said Watson.
“So we offer 12 educational contests to our participants and we’ve actually decided to add two new ones this year. One is going to be a t-shirt design contest. So the winner of the t-shirt design will actually have their design featured on the t-shirt that we give to participants this year. And also an educational reel contest. So we’re super excited about those two new additions. It will be a big year. We have our judge will be Dr. John Rayfield. He is actually an Alabama native, but now lives in Lubbock, is a professor at Texas Tech, has a very good portfolio. So we’re super excited to welcome him back to Alabama. Keeping on with the Texas theme, guest speaker is actually going to be Heather Welper, who is from Texas as well. And her main speech that she gives to youth is you can’t buy showmanship. So super excited about that opportunity,” said Watson.
“The AJCA Roundup is only open to youth in Alabama ages 9 to 21. For those who are interested in registering, they can go to bamabeef.org slash event and click on the roundup dates and it’ll take you directly to the website,” said Watson.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin and Elizabeth Sanders for Southeast AgNet.