Youth Involvement at World Dairy Expo: The How and Why Behind Their Success

Let's get started with Joseph Atkin and hear how this year's World Dairy Expo capped off his youth and collegiate dairy judging career.

Joseph, you had a very successful World Dairy Expo so far with going into judging with your collegiate judging team.

Tell us about that competition and lay the land of what that looks like.

Yeah, so I'm a part of the Iowa State dairy judging team and what our dairy judging team kind of has done to prepare for this contest has been a lot of practicing pretty much every weekend since we got back to school.

Mid-August has been filled with just attending farms and getting as many classes in as we can.

and getting our reasons down because it's a short time frame from when we're actually back to school and when we have this competition.

So it's as much practice as we can get in and as much team stuff as we can do together just to get to have a good team and just be prepared for this contest because it's something that we've definitely put a lot of time into, and it's something that we all really want to see each other do well in.

Wow.

And tell me about as you walked the shavings and you were evaluating the cattle, what was that like?

Yeah, it was honestly a really surreal moment.

I mean, something that I've dreamt of.

And I honestly have never really seen myself in that position before.

And I'm just really grateful to have that opportunity to be able to go to World Dairy Expo and be surrounded by so many people.

that have the same appreciation for the dairy industry as myself.

And just to be able to be standing on those colored shavings, it's a really, really surreal moment that I'm really honored to have that opportunity.

Yeah.

And tell us about some of the cows that you evaluated.

What did you see? Was there a favorite?

Oh, yeah, I'd say this contest, it came with its challenges.

But we had 12 classes, and I think there was like eight cow classes and four heifer classes.

And we had to give six sets of reasons.

And coming out of the contest after it was over and comparing our placings with my team, it was a little challenging because it felt like we were all kind of over the place with our placings just because there were a few challenging classes.

But overall, it was a really good contest, really good quality cattle.

And if I had to pick a favorite class, I'd have to say the milking shorthorn senior twos, just because those are the cattle I'm very fond of.

Our family shows and owns milking shorthorns.