The 120th National Western Stock Show, which closes Sunday, saw a standing-room only crowd in the CoBank auction arena at the new Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Livestock Center.

Bidders set a record Friday for the top eight livestock – steers, lambs, goats and hogs – with the grand champion steer garnering a record $320,000 price.

The steer, Boots, shown by South Dakota’s Cannon Reinmann, was purchased by Bank of Colorado and its president, Wes Allison, the CEO of the National Western.

Eleven Colorado kids also sold their animals at the auction. The top-placed Coloradan was Bailey Stromberger of Iliff and her reserve champion heavyweight hog, Benny. She’s 15 and a student at Caliche High School in Iliff.

Benny, 7 months, is Colorado-born and raised and said he’s been her best friend. “I love him to death,” Stromberger told the Denver Gazette. His favorite food? Marshmallows.

Colorado lawmakers annually raise money to buy livestock from a Colorado exhibitor, but Benny, who was sold for $120,000, was a bit out of range. TransWest Trucks, a long-time supporter of the junior auction, was the winning bidder.

JJ Ament, CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, told the Gazette he was in 4-H with Bailey’s dad, Brad. Celeste Delgado-Pelton, wife of state Sen. Byron Pelton of Sterling, was also in that same Proctor Poppers 4-H club with Ament and Stromberger.

Bailey will use her winnings to buy a vehicle and more hogs, she said.

Exhibitors, between the ages of 9 and 18, get into the National Western by lottery. The Strombergers have been successful before; a hog shown by daughter Allie won the 2020 grand champion title; daughter Brooke has also shown several times at the National Western.

Colorado lawmakers raised $16,000 for the sale, with the state Senate outraising the House. That included contributions from the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, Grid United, American Petroleum Institute (API) and Bally’s Arapahoe Park racetrack.

Bidding for Colorado livestock is always competitive, so the lawmakers, represented by Republicans Rep. Dusty Johnson of Fort Morgan and Sen. Byron Pelton of Sterling had to wait a while before they won their animal. They were ably assisted by Landon Gates of the lobby firm Capitol Focus, which represents API as well as the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, the corn and wheat growers and the wool growers’ associations.

With a winning bid of $14,500, the Colorado General Assembly won a reserve champion hog from Annie Hanratty of Pueblo County. The Hanratty family operates a calf/cow ranch near Avondale.

Hanratty, 16, raised nine-month old Tum, who she said is stubborn but also very special. It’s her first time at the junior livestock auction.

She said she’s sad he’s going off to slaughter, but she’ll use the money for her college fund. She’s planning to go to Vanderbilt to study psychology.

The lawmakers’ group tried one last time, combining funds with Future Farmers of America, 4-H and several other groups, to buy the last Colorado animal, a second place class 15 steer crossbred shown by Cash Pratt of Pueblo, but even with $36,000 raised in a very short period of time, it wasn’t enough to win, according to Johnson. Pratt’s steer was the 106th out of 108 animals sold at the auction.

The new arena, the first time it’s been used for the junior livestock auction, has more than double the seating of the previous arena in the old Event Center, at 725 seats. It also features an LED screen that shows the names of the exhibitors, and there’s space to add more seating when needed, and it was needed.