Thousands of cattle converge in Madison for 57th World Dairy Expo

Oct 04, 2024

By Tim Peterson

For Emily Yeiser Stepp, the week of the World Dairy Expo in Madison ranks right up there with Christmas as one of her favorite times of the year.

Stepp has been coming to Wisconsin for the expo — the biggest trade show dedicated to dairy in the world — since 2005 as a cattle exhibitor and a judge.

This week, her family’s pair of Brown Swiss calves made the trip with them to compete at the expo. “PSwift” and “Patagonia” each earned top-10 finishes among the roughly 3,000 head of cattle from the United States and Canada assembled on the Alliant Center grounds.

Stepp also serves on the board of the expo and is a leader with the National Milk Producers Federation. The week is an opportunity to represent her organization and meet with stakeholders up and down the dairy supply chain.

She talked with WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” about the event and some challenges facing the dairy industry, including threats like bird flu being found in cattle and the Farm Bill potentially expiring next week.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

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