To better highlight World Dairy Expo’s breed champions and speed up the selection of the week’s Supreme Champions, for the first time this year, the show is hosting two Supreme Champion ceremonies. The first was held Thursday night and featured the Junior Champion animals of each breed’s Junior and Open Show.

As the winning heifers entered onto the colored shavings through fog and lights, they took their places along the “walk of fame” in the center of the ring. The Coliseum was filled with people who had watched the recently completed International Holstein Show heifer classes and those who had returned to the Expo grounds to witness this first-of-its-kind ceremony.

The top award of the night went to the most recent champion, the Holstein Junior Champion. Just an hour before, Judge Jamie Black of Batavia, N.Y., had selected Genesee Altitude Leah, the winning Spring Yearling for Doeberiener, Bowen, Conroy, Clarkvalley, and Osinga of West Salem, Ohio, as his top heifer. The official judges of the other breed shows then agreed with him as they evaluated each breed’s representative and appointed Leah as the best heifer on the Expo grounds this year.

Reserve Supreme Junior Champion honors of the Open Show went to the Red and White, Milksource A Tierney-Red-ET. She was named the first place Fall Calf and Junior Champion on Wednesday night for Clarkvalley, Pierre Boulet, and Jeff and Jim Buter of Woodville, Ontario.

Among the junior-owned animals, Supreme Junior Champion went to the Brown Swiss, Pit-Crew Collapse Talista. She is a Summer Yearling leased by Allison Foss from Pit-Crew Genetics of Cambridge, Minn.

The Junior Show Reserve Supreme Champion honor also went to the Red and White. That was Red-Violet The North-Red-ET, the winning Winter Calf owned by Hailey Abraham and Ella Spiniolas of Harvard, Ill.

The Supreme Champion and Reserve Supreme Champion cows will be selected Friday afternoon following the conclusion of the International Holstein Show.

Katelyn Allen

Katelyn Allen joined the Hoard’s Dairyman team as the Publications Editor in August 2019 and is now an associate editor. Katelyn is a 2019 graduate of Virginia Tech, where she majored in dairy science and minored in communication. Katelyn grew up on her family’s registered Holstein dairy, Glen-Toctin Farm, in Jefferson, Md.