World Dairy Expo 2017

Welcome to our write-up of the World Dairy Expo 2017. This is definitely an outsiders perspective of an amazing experience! If you would have told me that I was going to make an appearance at World Dairy Expo I would have told you, “you’re nuts,”! Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised by anything since I was at Canoecopia at the same location earlier this year.

World Dairy Expo 2017 First Impressions

The first impression you get when you arrive at World Dairy Expo 2017 is, WOW, this is a huge event!  Not knowing where to start, I was drawn to the Veterans Memorial Coliseum first. The coliseum building is a large circular red building and it had a Kemp’s trailer parked out front.  Great way for Kemp’s to get their name out there; it’s the first (and last) thing you see!

When I entered the coliseum from one of it’s many entrances, I decided to peer into the the arena area. They were having the World Dairy Expo Cattle Show. I took a few pictures and took it in for a bit. Very well organized and and fascinating to see. The cattle must think they are rock stars appearing in such a epic location!

Always looking for the perfect angle for pictures, I went all the way around the coliseum and peeked in each entry way.  I finally got to the area where the cameraman was recording the broadcast that they had playing throughout the expo. There were hundreds of dairy industry booths all the way around the coliseum on multiple levels.  So much to see but, that was just the start!

Cattle Barn and Outside Experiences

There was no lack of places to wander. As I exited the back side of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum there we many tents and outside experiences to take in. I checked out one of the smaller tents and was amazed by the number of different products to make farming easier. Technology seems to be booming in the industry!

There we a lot of tractors and other farm equipment in the parking lots. There was a whole other building, labeled the Arena Building, that I didn’t even have time to check out 🙁

On the other hand, this is a good thing, it gives me a reason to come back next year 🙂

Although I missed a number of things, I wasn’t going to miss the cattle barn.  This was a very neatly organized area that I saw a number of people taking their time enjoying the experience and taking pictures.  I had a feeling that some of them maybe haven’t seen cows in person before. Seems like this is something that most of us Wisconsinites take for granted.  There were people from all over the World here and it was great seeing everyone enjoying this culture as displayed in one of Wisconsin’s greatest cities!

Here are a few pictures from the 2017 World Dairy Expo Cattle Barn. My favorite is the one with the cow keeping his eye on me. Seems like he was spying on me, can you spot him?

World Dairy Expo Main Exhibition Hall

Finally, it was time to move on to the main reason for my visit.  As I always say, to support customers, you need to understand the industry and see them in their operating environment. As I entered the first thing that caught my eye was all of the cool artistic stuff they had in the main lobby area. T-Shirts, souvenirs and other fun trinkets.  One booth I really liked was the Cary Sign Farm Signs booth. Really cool artistic signs! There was an area with large amounts of different cheeses to sample.  They also had ice cream, chocolates and other dairy treats to sample and buy. This was really a great area for people to bring their families!

As I entered the main exposition area, I became very aware of the technology involved in farming.  Some of these booths were awesome!  From what I understand, two of the biggest, DeLaval and BouMatic, are in direct competition and they both brought their A game! Both these companies are using robotics for milking cows.  I was informed that they have stalls that take the cow in and automate the milking process. As if that isn’t sophisticated enough, cows have RFID tags that know the frequency of the individual cows milking and, if the cow is early to the optimum miking schedule, it won’t let the cow in!

Here is a picture of the BouMatic booth that demonstrates this:

Although, cow technology dominates, there were also goat milking solutions there as well. One cool both was from a company named Waikato Milking Systems. With companies like Waikato, I am always impressed on the solid use of color to bring brand awareness. Lot’s of LEDs and powder coated metals.

Agromatic and Agro Air Dynamics

Finally, after seeing all of this amazing farm expo stuff it was time to meet up with the client. I came around to the Agromatic / Agro Air Dynamics booths. I had did a previous write-up of my experiences with Agro Air Dynamics. Such a great company with people that have a passion for the Dairy Industry. Agromatic had a very cool barn shaped expo frame that they had their cow stalls and other products in. Definitely one of the best of the 2017 World Dairy Expo!

Right next to the Agromatic booth was the Agro Air Dynamics booth.  Their area was small but was filled with the new banner that I designed for them and a couple of their fan products.  While there, Kent from Agro Air Dynamics gave me a quick tour of the Main Exhibition Hall and filled me in on who was doing what.  This was the icing on the cake for me and really opened my eyes up to the vastness of the industry!

As I made my way out, I decided to stop at the US Department of Agriculture booth and had a nice statistical discussion with the friendly woman working there.  I honestly feel that good (accurate) data is important to success. I took some of their reports and will be reviewing them at a later date for some insights.

Wrap Up and Leaving Madison

In conclusion, the World Dairy Expo is a huge awesome event that everyone can enjoy!  There’s things for people of all ages to do, no matter what your interests are. I’m definitely looking forward to going again. Next time, I’m setting more time aside for it 🙂

I quickly want to note that I wasn’t looking forward to leaving. There was a lot of people and traffic in the area.  Kudos to the Madison area though, I easily got out of the area and on to the highway. It was bumper to bumper but I got home quite efficiently and, most importantly, safely.

Such a great area for an expo and an utterly amazing experience!