A few weeks ago was one of the biggest industry events of the year – World Dairy Expo. The week of World Dairy Expo is always a busy time of the year for us. We were in the fields, I attended World Dairy Expo, and we had some tours on the farm.
I always enjoy World Dairy Expo. You get to see a lot of people who you currently do business with as well as people who you’d want to do business with. It’s a good chance to exchange ideas and see who is doing what. World Dairy Expo really is the social aspect of farmers. You realize that farmers all around the world are pretty much the same wherever we are. There are different concerns or issues, but our base is the same. World Dairy Expo is great because it really gives us a global perspective of dairy farming, from milk pricing in the EU, to water issues in California.
Having the tours at our farm around Expo time is great. Some of the people we have on tours have come to the farm before, and they’ve become our friends. We don’t see them very often, maybe a few times over the last decade, but we’re all farmers and we have that bond.
On our farm, we have pro-cross cattle, which means that we have a three-way crossbreeding program using Holstein, Montbeliarde and Swedish Red. This type of breeding program is pretty unique within the dairy community; quite a few of the tours we get are to see our breeding program. We had farmers from Idaho, California, South Dakota, Portugal, Ohio and Pennsylvania come take our tour.
The cows in our barn are a rainbow of color.
World Dairy Expo is a great time of year. We’re already looking forward to next year.