SAN ANTONIO – The 70th annual Atascosa County Livestock Show is taking place this week, at the Atascosa County Show Barn.
Students from South Texas are participating at the livestock show, and that includes 11-year-old Bryson Cogburn.
“It’s basically like a sport, but in my opinion, its better,” Cogburn said.
The sixth-grade student from Savannah Heights Intermediate School has been preparing for this show for a while.
“You want to be calm. You want to be slow and steady. You have to have the pig’s head up and still make eye contact with the judge,” Cogburn said.
Cogburn has been raising and showing animals since he was eight-years-old.
It’s been months of responsibility and learning about the pigs.
“We had to walk them. We had to wash them. We had to clean their pens or what not. And that probably took one and a half or two hours a day. We do the most of that most of the time. Especially during winter break, Thanksgiving break,” Cogburn said.
About 60 students from Somerset ISD are involved this year.
“It’s an Atascosa County tradition. Seventy years for the county show now. It keeps moving forward and we just keep trying to build the best kids through training, responsibility, through this leadership of raising an animal and trying to build the next generation of future leaders,” Justin Taylor, agriculture science teacher at Somerset High School said.
Cogburn is getting ready for Denver, Colorado where he will be showing at the National Western Livestock Show.
“It’s going to be really fun. It’s my first out of state show, so I’m really happy for it,” Cogburn said.