World Dairy Expo 2008

Did you know that when they're getting a cow ready to show, they blow-dry and trim the hair along the base of her spine (right above the tail) into a Mohawk-looking line to make her back look straighter? And that you can buy a hairpiece to make a cow's tail look thicker and fuller? (Which is not cheating, because the cow isn't being judged on her tail. But a fluffy tail makes the udder look fuller, and the cow is being judged on that.) And when a cow is all dolled up and ready for the show, one person walks her to the stadium holding her halter while another trails behind with a bucket and paper towels, so if she has to defecate they can catch it mid-air and wipe her off. Somehow I was amazed by this.

Anyway, greetings from the World Dairy Expo in Madison. I'm mostly clueless about this topic, but it looked like Cousin Bill did all the right stuff out there, and the cow looked pretty (as cows go). And the exhibition hall is a wonderful thing, with people giving away tote bags, foam rubber cows, cheese, bookmarks, and an amazing variety of key fobs and magnets and candy and stuff. If you happen to be the kind of person who will happily take anything that's free, even if you have no use for it and aren't even sure what it is (that would be me), then you would have been in heaven there. I particularly enjoyed the vanilla "cow's tail" candy, and was surprised that a company was marketing a form of bovine growth hormone as an environmentally friendly strategy (more milk from the same amount of resources means less impact on the environment, theoretically). They gave out the best freebies, so I guess they're really trying to convince folks.

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Next time, I really need to take the whole day off. And bring boots.