There’s so much more to Maggie Livingston than exemplifying the beauty and resolve it takes to serve as the 2025 Larimer County Fair & PRCA Rodeo Queen.
Outside of her rodeo queen responsibilities, Maggie is pursuing a degree in agricultural education at Colorado State University (CSU). She also works at the Eaton Area Community Center, interns with the CSU extension team, and tends to her family’s animals, including her beloved horses, Wally and Bella.
“It’s wonderful to come back to this property and to come back to my animals and just kind of decompress,” Maggie shares. “Honestly, some of the chores we do here is the most therapeutic thing you could do. I’m so incredibly blessed.”
In addition to Wally and Bella, the family’s property has a few other animal residents: two pigs, a handful of chickens, a rooster, a trio of ducks, a pair of cats, and a couple of dogs.
Maggie takes turns with her younger brother, Landen, to care for the animals, usually trading off with him in the evenings to feed the pigs. Each day, she’s out on the property, carrying out her chores and riding her horses – and doing everything in her power to advocate for agriculture, both on a personal level and as rodeo queen.
“My time has been beautifully challenging,” Maggie says about serving as the 2025 rodeo queen. “It’s honestly been an experience unlike anything I’ve ever had before. It’s been a mix of keeping this beautiful persona and this glamorous appearance with the grit and the grace that it kind of takes to be a rodeo queen. I’ve learned a lot about myself and about my horses and about the rodeo industry and about how to be a spokesperson for not just my rodeo, but for the industry.”
While balancing her rodeo queen duties, along with everything else, she also handled an unexpected difficult situation with her long-standing show horse, Wally. Toward the end of her reign as rodeo queen, Maggie actually had to switch from Wally to her new horse, Bella, to finish off the season.
Wally, her 4-H horse she’s had for nearly 10 years, was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease, a progressive disorder of the pituitary gland, in early June and placed on “bedrest” for weeks to help him recover.
Bella, a 6-year-old mare, took over as Maggie’s horse for the remainder of the 2025 rodeo season.
“She’s amazing,” Maggie says. “She takes such good care of me.”
Maggie and her family purchased Bella from a cow operation in Nebraska. Wally originally came from a family in Grand Junction with two teenage boys who were looking to buy a newer horse.
Although a tad broken-hearted that she had to replace Wally as her rodeo horse, Maggie is truly grateful to have Bella and her steady confidence and readiness.
With Wally, Maggie realizes that she might never be able to show him again in an intensive way. Yet, her ultimate hope for him is to live a comfortable, fulfilling life.
“My goal for him is to be able to move without pain, to be out in our arena and pasture and to run and to kick and to not be held back by that pain,” Maggie comments.
“I’m really, really blessed to have two wonderful horses,” she adds. “I know that everything happens for a reason. And that even through this hardship, I know that I can push on and continue on and that I just need to accept the blessing of the fact that I needed this to connect with Bella for a bigger reason.”
And as Maggie prepares to step down as rodeo queen in August, she hopes her successor continues to follow the passions that got her involved in the industry in the first place.
“Something that I’ve really spoken on and really learned about these last two years is finding your strength, finding things that you like to do that make you feel strong, not just things you think you’re good at or that people expect you to do,” Maggie urges. “Choose what makes you feel strong.”