Take a quick look at the World Dairy Expo (Expo) schedule year in and year out, and the level of commitment show organizers have for promoting the involvement of young people in the dairy industry becomes immediately clear. Featured during Expo week are the WDE Youth Showmanship Contest, WDE Youth Fitting Contest, several high-level youth dairy cattle judging contests and more.
This year, the National Intercollegiate Dairy Cattle Judging Contest will be getting a little bit of extra attention celebrating its 100th year of competition. Of those 100 contests, the last 43 have taken place in Madison.
“Expo’s Dairy Cattle Show is known for having world-class cattle, which provide the framework for high-quality, workable classes,” notes Ann Marie Magnochi, Expo’s Dairy Cattle Show manager. “The central location of the event lends itself well to traveling universities. It also provides teams additional opportunities for practice after the school year begins.”
Early Contest History
The first national collegiate contest took place at the 1916 Dairy Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa. Classes consisted of four breeds: Ayrshire, Guernsey, Jersey and Holstein. Iowa State University, South Dakota State University, the University of Nebraska and Kansas State University were the competing schools. Iowa State University is the only school to compete in all 100 contests.
Waterloo hosted the contest for most of the next five decades. However, competition was suspended for two years during both World War I and World War II and again in 2020 due to COVID-19. This all explains why the observation of the centennial is taking place in 2021 rather than 2016.
Throughout the Waterloo Era, the contest changed to reflect trends in the dairy industry.
Bull classes were added for the four original breeds in 1919, then discontinued in 1963 when heifer classes were introduced. In 1932, the Brown Swiss breed was added to the list of classes.
In 1946, Canadian, J.A. Stewart, University of Guelph, became the first non-U.S. participant to capture high individual honors in the contest. In 1952, Barbara Riggs, University of Maryland, became the first woman to earn the high individual award.
When the Dairy Cattle Congress ended in 1966, the contest moved to the North American Dairy Show in Columbus, Ohio the following year. It remained there until 1973, when a devastating fire at the Ohio State Fairgrounds during the show forced the collegiate contest to search for a new home. Over the next three years, the contest was held at three different locations.
Coming to Madison
With their own event still less than a decade old, Expo’s founders saw opportunity and launched a major campaign to bring the contest to Madison.
“They were trying to promote Expo as a central meeting place for all the different segments of the entire dairy industry, both on a national and international level” recalls Dave Selner, who at that time was finishing his work on a doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as serving as an assistant coach for the school’s dairycattle judging team. “Hosting this kind of high-profile contest, with its emphasis on youth, fit right into the strategy.”
In 1977, the contest came to Madison for the first time. While basic contest logistics remained the same, members of the new contest management team also began searching for ways to enhance the overall experience of students traveling to Madison. In that first year, they offered a precontest practice tour on the weekend just ahead of the judging competition. On the tour, which continues through the present day, students get in some last-minute practice ahead of the contest. As part of the program, they also tour the National Dairy Shrine and the Hoard’s Dairyman Farm.
The contest continued adding breeds as developments in the dairy industry warranted. Classes for Milking Shorthorns were introduced in 1982, while Red & Whites were added in 2001. All the major U.S. dairy breeds are now represented.
A major structural change in the contest came in 2018 when electronic scoring was introduced. Before that, contestants turned in handwritten placings for each class. The placings were then hand-keyed into a software system by contest volunteers. With the new system, contestants enter their placings directly into the tabulation system via electronic tablets.
Other changes have come more gradually. “Gender numbers have changed dramatically over the years,” says Bonnie Ayars, who has coached The Ohio State University for the past 14 years. “These days, you’ll see just as many young women participating as young men. We’re also seeing more young people without traditional dairy backgrounds taking part.”
Looking Ahead
With so many people, including contest volunteers, team coaches, judges, Expo staff and others involved in shaping the contest, predicting what kinds of changes might be coming in the future is all but impossible. Near term, there’s a chance the contest will take on more of an international look. Longer term, the contest will likely continue to take advantage of technology. What’s unlikely to change anytime soon is the link between Expo and the contest.
Workplace Readiness
Spend some time talking to just about anyone who has competed in the National Intercollegiate Dairy Cattle Judging Contest at World Dairy Expo, and a common theme is likely to emerge: The skills learned in preparing for the contest proved to be extremely beneficial once they entered the work-a-day world.
Laurie Winkelman puts the critical thinking skills she developed as a member of the University of Wisconsin-Madison judging team to use “nearly every day” in her current job as a dairy nutritionist for Vita Plus Corp. in Appleton, Wis. “Judging teaches you how to think on your feet and make quick decisions,” says Winkelman, who captured the high individual award in the Intercollegiate contest in 2002. She and her UW teammates also captured the team title that year. “You learn how to justify what you’redoing and why you’re doing itto other people.”The experience also helped Winkelman polish presentation skills. “In judging, you develop the skills you need to talk to people you might not know really well,” she says. “And you develop an appreciation for how important poise and confidence can be when you’re in a pressure situation.”
Leah Ziemba, who won high individual honors while competing as a member of the Cornell University championship team in 2000, offers a similar assessment. “When you’re judging in a contest, you think about how you want to place a group of cows, rationalize how you made the decision and then report that orally,” says Ziemba, currently an attorney specializing in environmental regulatory and food regulatory law at the Madison law firm of Michael Best and Friedrich LLP. “In my job now, I analyze a set of facts on a case, then decide how I might want to report or portray that story. Instead of presenting to a dairy cattle judge, I’m presenting to someone at a regulatory agency.”“A lot of dairy cattle judging is about convincing. You need to convince the person listening to your oral reasons that you’re correct. That’s no different than what I do now on a daily basis. I’m convincing the people I’m working with that our interpretation of a regulation is correct or that our interpretation of the law is on target.”
