Episode Details

World Dairy Expo just named its 2026 class of honorees — and this year's picks tell the story of where dairy has been, where it's headed, and who's actually doing the work to get it there.

A man walks into a Quebec AI center in 1966. He's 21 years old. They hand him a bull nobody wants — a young sire the industry has already written off. He doesn't flinch. He backs the bull anyway. Six decades later, Robert Chicoine's fingerprints are on the genetic evaluation systems, the progeny testing programs, and the global export infrastructure that Canadian dairy genetics runs on. His story is a masterclass in what happens when one person sees what an entire industry refuses to.

A sixth-generation Wisconsin farmer trades the editor's desk at Hoard's Dairyman for the economist's chair at CoBank — without ever leaving the barn. Corey Geiger spent nearly 30 years shaping how dairy people think about their industry. Now he's shaping how lenders think about dairy's future. His analysis of the 800,000-head heifer hole and the shift from volume to components has changed how producers, co-ops, and banks make decisions.

And then there's a family in upstate New York that milks 10,000 cows, breeds Supreme Champions, and makes Mexican-style cheese because their employees couldn't find it locally. Oakfield Corners Dairy took a 1966 startup with 100 cows and built it into a global genetics powerhouse with Premier Breeder banners, a generational sire in SHEEPSTER, and 4,500 embryos implanted every year.

The Story You'll Hear

• The bull that Quebec's entire industry rejected — and the young analyst who staked his career on it
• How a farm kid from Reedsville, Wisconsin became the voice dairy lenders trust most
• The 2019 mating decision at Oakfield that broke every rule in their own program — and produced a Grand Champion
• Why Geiger believes the old way of measuring milk is already obsolete
• The moment Chicoine realized Canada needed to stop importing genetic evaluation systems and build its own
• How 13 family members run a 10,000-cow dairy without destroying the partnership — or each other
• What Oakfield's artisanal cheese project reveals about labor, culture, and keeping good people

Three very different paths. One shared thread: these are people who saw what was coming before the rest of the industry caught up — and had the conviction to act on it.

Read the full feature profiles, deep-dive genetics data, and interview transcripts at https://www.thebullvine.com/show-reports/world-dairy-expo/from-65-cows-to-10000-the-bull-nobody-wanted-and-an-economist-who-tells-it-straight-wde-names-its-2026-award-winners/ . Subscribe to The Bullvine Podcast wherever you listen, and sign up for The Bullvine Weekly newsletter so you never miss the stories that matter to your operation.

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