Before going into discussing about our Western Bonanza Jackpot Show, I thought that I should explain something about Cal Poly who annually hosts this show. California Polytechnic State University, better known as "Cal Poly" is a non-grant institution which is part of the California State University System. San Luis Obispo, located on the Central Coast is half-way between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The student body has over 16,000 students and our College of Agriculture has the largest number of undergraduate students of all non-land grant institutions in the nation. Cal Poly specializes in undergraduate education where the "learn by doing" motto originated and is why our graduates are so successful following graduation.

It is by this "learn by doing" that first got the Western Bonanza off the ground in 1984 through a senior project. Senior projects are required for graduation for all undergraduates where they have to research and conduct a project. Mark Reichle an Agribusiness student was our first show manager who research and organized our first show. Following graduation, Mark fitted and showed cattle for awhile before returning to school to complete his MBA at Vanderbilt University. Now Mark is a union negotiator for Ford Motor Company in Michigan. Much of the early success of our Western Bonanza Show should be attributed to another senior project student by the name of Pam Fyock. She and a few volunteers helped build up our sponsorships which helped generate the funds to make our jackpot show possible. Pam raised over $10,000 by donations from private individuals, mostly from breeders of steers and heifers. Following graduation, Pam went to work for the former National Cattlemen’s Association as the assistant Political Action Committee fund raiser. Pam soon was the head of PAC where she set all time fund raising records before going into private business.

Presently the Western Bonanza is organized and conducted through a two quarter class offered in the Animal Science Department, Asci. 212. Cal Poly’s Agribusiness Department has classes in fair management but does not offer any experience in livestock shows. Students that are serious about entering Fair Management are given the opportunity to conduct an entire show through the Animal Science Department. During the fall quarter, a group of students from all majors are selected from previous years to serve as committee chairmen. These chairmen are divided up into key areas of responsibility who do the ground work in organizing the show. They use previous year’s of experience to help improve the show each year. During the second quarter, some fifty to sixty students meet once a week together to be briefed on the progress and time line for each of the committees. Committees meet at least once a week to plan and prepare for the show. There are four committees which plan and conduct the show:

1. Sponsorship: The sponsorship committee is in charge of soliciting donations from various corporate, livestock breeders and friends of our annual show. Each year they raise over $15,000 to purchase awards which are distributed to winners and all exhibitors. Advertisements are sold in our show program and booth space are used to help generate additional prizes and defray show expenses.

 

 

2. Entry: Entry forms are designed, along with a flyer which includes show rules and a schedule by the entry committee. This committee processes annually over 400

entries from some 250 plus exhibitors where a show program is produced to break-down the classes and show order. As mentioned earlier, the sponsorship committee sells advertisements in this show program which every exhibitor receives.

 

3. Awards: Many traditional and unique awards are given every year to the winners and participants. The awards committee is responsible for working with the sponsorship committee to create and design awards after sponsors have been committed. Additionally, this committee is in charge of displaying and handing out awards and when a donor is present to make sure they get recognized by presenting the awards. When donors are present for the championship awards, they are encouraged to have photos taken of them and the recipients. These photos are included in a certificate and later sent to major donors as a thank you.

 

4. Facilities: This committee plans and sets up the fairgrounds for the show. Since we try to cut down on our expenses, students in the class do all the preparation and clean-up of the show grounds. Barn charts are developed and all exhibitors are aided when they arrive at the fairgrounds to find their stalls and help them unload. This caring attitude and extra effort has been a real plus to create a general good feeling between our Cal Poly student staff and exhibitors.

 

The Western Bonanza Show is held at the Mid-State County Fairgrounds in Paso Robles, thirty miles north of San Luis Obispo. It is hoped that someday Cal Poly will construct a multipurpose indoor arena which will hold this show and stalling for the animals. By having the show at Cal Poly it would serve for a better recruiting tool and be much easier and cheaper to manage. The Central Coast can be a beautiful location to hold this jackpot show and is welcome relief for many exhibitors coming from the Central Valley which can be miserable with the winter fog. However, in February our show has been hit by some very cold temperatures and torrential rains. When this happens it is tough on everyone, but it brings everyone, students and exhibitors together to pitch-in and work together.

From the original first year in 1984, the Western Bonanza theme has been an educational and fun activity for all exhibitors and families. Cal Poly hosts this show as a non-profit event where all net proceeds go back to the exhibitors in either prizes or premiums. Prizes are spread out between many exhibitors with no big money awarded for any major prize. All exhibitors receive our famous Western Bonanza T- shirt. Many of the prizes have the Western Bonanza logo which serves as a great advertisement throughout the state.

One area that we have received criticism from some outside individuals has been our limited amount of rules. At the onset we have tried to make this a fun show for everyone and have tried to enforce rules more on an individual basis. We have always felt that if you can’t effectively enforce rules, that they shouldn’t be printed. However, we have had to add a limited amount over the years which has helped alleviate some problems. A good example of this would be in breed classification. Originally, we use to break our steer show down into various purebred classes and crossbreeds. It got to a point where one couldn’t tell the difference between our "straightbred" steer classes and crossbreed. Since we had a hard time enforcing these separate divisions, we changed the steer divisions by color, black and all other colors. This change seem to become accepted quickly and now is accepted throughout the state. We still try to award and recognize just as many weight division champions, but now, it is much fairer for everyone.

Our show has divisions for steer, heifer, cow-calf and some bull divisions. We have been fortunate to work with some junior breed associations which have used our show as a regional or sectional show. Besides getting some added entries, individual breed associations put up $500 which is divided between individual classes to help boost premiums. We use their standard breed rules when they sponsor the show and some associations do request to allow bulls be shown. This type of relationship with these associations has helped boost our breeding cattle participation. The steer show is broken down into divisions for market, progress and prospect, with separate classes for black and all other colors as mention previously.

One popular event which we use for a fun and "ice breaker" contest has been our team fitting contest. Teams consist of three individuals, either junior or senior age contestants. We continue to get large turnouts of contestants that try to match their fitting skills and talents against others. Some teams are extremely competitive while others take joy in just participating. Awards are given to all participating individual team members.

We have held educational workshops in the past on fitting, showing and feeding their project animals. This seemed to be very popular with younger members, and even brought in junior members from the area that were not exhibitors. Because of time and space constraints, we did have to discontinue these workshops. Now with the addition of a new showring there is potential to bring back some of these educational events.

Another new program that we adopted three years ago was our scholarship program. For the past three years, we have offered two, three hundred dollar scholarships to Western Bonanza exhibitors. Besides being a excellent recruitment tool for Cal Poly, the scholarship helped stress the importance of good academic work of exhibitors. The scholarship is based on the exhibitor’s high school or junior college G.P.A., activities, beef projects and their knowledge of the beef industry instead of winning purple ribbons. An application, essay and interview are used in selecting the two winners. Our scholarship fund has been helped by raising money by our annual exhibitor barbecue which helps generate additional funds. We have meat donated and a cater (usually parents or friends of classmates) prepares a delicious barbecue for all exhibitors and their families. Besides generating a few dollars, this barbecue is definitely a big hit by all.

In the 1996 show, we were able to have all the exhibitors become aware of the Western Fairs Code of Ethics by publishing the code in our show program and have every exhibitor sign a pledge before exhibiting their animals. This was only a start for the first year and hopefully in the future we could have some workshops or seminars to address the ethics issue. It is important that our jackpot shows address these potential problems and lead the way to correct the situation before animals reach terminal shows.

Our 1997 Western Bonanza Show has now added a lamb show. We have many overhead costs that need covering and because of the increase number of shows now in California, it was time to attract from a larger audience. A new barn was added at the fairgrounds this year which is going to be converted into a show ring and will give us the opportunity to add more exhibitors and animals. In addition, we have added a team salesmanship contest to our already busy program. These types of activities should prove to be very worthwhile for all exhibitors to gain real world experience besides just showing their individual animals in hopes of winning a purple ribbon.

In closing, I would like to say it has been a real pleasure to present some historical background on our successful Western Bonanza Show at this ethics conference. We have always tried to make our show educational and fun for everyone, both parents and kids.