Networking for the Summit in Amarillo by Faye Smith, AJSA Public Relations Officer
After a long, exciting summer, the American Junior Shorthorn Association Board of Directors, as well as other Shorthorn juniors, traveled to Amarillo, Texas for the Summit Leadership Conference. They were joined by members from the American Gelbvieh Junior Association and the American Junior Simmental Association for a four-day long excursion to learn more about being leaders in our respective organizations and educate ourselves on the beef industry. Our first day started off with arrivals, as well as many icebreakers to give us ample time to meet each other, and go past the awkward stages that come with leadership conferences. Luckily for us, the Shorthorn Board made the most of the Icebreakers, and lead right into our 56
evening with Dr. J.D. Ragland a speaker from Randall County Extension that gave us great advice on how to be better leaders and communicators. We ended our night with pizza and several very competitive card & board games. Tuesday, we lead off with starting our morning bus ride with Megan Mangold, the intern and speaker for Cultivate Agency that runs the social media campaign #cattletales. She was able to capture our whole event through that social media and had many of us participants tell our agricultural story. This led us to Canyon, Texas where we spent our morning at the West Texas A&M University Ranch. Here, we were able to see their research on cloning a Prime Yield Grade One carcass, as well as tour their student-ran feedlot.
shorthorn country = september 2021
We spent the rest of our day touring the new agricultural facilities at West Texas A&M, as well as their student meat packing facility, and listening to several professors speak on subjects that ranged from beef quality and palatability, beef harvest and fabrication to riskmanagement within the beef industry and agricultural leadership. For our last day, we spent the morning touring Wrangler Feedyard, ran by Cactus Feeders, learning about how commercial feedlots like Wrangler finish their cattle to the meat packer. They educated us on the care, feeding, and processing of cattle when they get into the feedyard. The attendees enjoyed seeing the large scale feedyard and learning how they operate. Our afternoon was spent with the Cactus Cares group, a philanthropy team
