The President of Canadian Western Agribition says this year's show attracted about 120 thousand attendees and marked an increase in exhibitors and some strong prices for cattle sales.

Kim Hextall says the six-day event is a showcase for livestock genetics with entries up this year over the five-year average, as well as record-setting entries in the Junior Beef Extreme.

This year's event featured 12 beef breed shows as well as bison, sheep and alpaca.

Livestock sales at Agribition topped $2.25 million with some sales still closing, a number of private treaty sales were also made in the barns which is not part of that number.

Hextall says they saw some strong international interest in Canadian genetics with a bred Speckle Park cow selling for $48,000 to a buyer in Australia, while a Limousine heifer sold to a Texas buyer for $40,000. 

This year Agribition welcomed 1200 international guests from 63 countries.

She says there was lots of excitement around this year's event from producers and exhibitors, to buyers, international visitors and more. 

"It was really exciting to see the students back in full force, we had over 10,000 students in our registered programming. I know that there were schools that came with their students that hadn't registered with the program. So, well over 10,000 students, and it's great for them to come and learn something about agriculture. Another thing we should mention is the number of people that came for our indigenous Ag Summit, we had over 276 registered for that. And 767, who attended our 10th annual Grain Expo. So watch for those again next year."

There were a number of events to keep people entertained.

"We had some stock dogs. This year, there was a cattle dog trial and that was new. We had 18 dogs entered, so that was great to see the interest in that. Chore team filled up and they were on all day Monday in the Brandt Center. The horse pulse had an exhibitor from the U.S. come this year. So it was really interesting to see that people are wanting to come to the show. We added a second night of Party in the Dirt and that was a real hit, and the rodeo had three performances sold out. So people were in the seats."

You can hear more of Glenda-Lee's discussion with Agribition President Kim Hextall by clicking the link below.