Kingsire sired the top three senior cows. One EX dam stood behind the Grand Champion, two intermediate contenders and the Premier Breeder banner. And 191 heifers showed that the Ayrshire surge is real.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Bricker-Farms King Cinderella, the winning 4-year-old owned by Milk Source Genetics, J&S Fairbanks and K&M Wolf of Kaukauna, Wis., was named Grand Champion of the 2026 International Ayrshire Show. That flipped last year’s Senior 3-Year-Old result, when she finished second to Coppenbarger Kingsire Trinity. This time Trinity stood Reserve Grand. Judge David Hanson of Nicollet, Minn., and associate Eric Houdek of Hastings, Minn., sorted 191 heifers and 115 cows. Their top three senior cows were all daughters of Bear-Ayr Distinct Kingsire. The bigger story walked in behind Cinderella: her 11-year-old dam, Bricker-Farms Gibbs Carvella, won Senior Champion of the Junior Show, while the Bricker family took Premier Breeder and Senior Best Three. Their Reynolds daughter Bricker-Farms R Cadillac-ET was named Reserve Intermediate Champion. Hall’s V-Lane Spectacle-ET kept her fall run going as Intermediate Champion and Grand Champion of the Junior Show. For breeders, the lesson is plain: one proven cow family, managed right, can carry an entire breed show.
MADISON, Wis. — Jim Ostrom has won plenty on the colored shavings with Holsteins and Jerseys. On Tuesday he walked into the Coliseum holding the halter of an Ayrshire and walked out with the purple banner.
“My feeling on her is the same as the day we bought her, and that we think she’s a generational kind of cow,” Ostrom said after Bricker-Farms King Cinderella was named Grand Champion of the International Ayrshire Show. “Her udder, her mammary system is incredible… I think she’s a bit of a juggernaut, to be truthful.”
He’s not wrong. But the real story at World Dairy Expo 2026 wasn’t one cow. It was a whole family, a sire that owned the senior final, and a breed that needed the entire Coliseum ring just to judge its calf classes.
Open Show Champions
| Award | Animal | Sire | Owner(s) |
| Grand & Senior Champion | Bricker-Farms King Cinderella | Kingsire | Milk Source Genetics, J&S Fairbanks & K&M Wolf, Kaukauna, WI |
| Reserve Grand & Reserve Senior | Coppenbarger Kingsire Trinity | Kingsire | Terri Packard, Ernie Kueffner & Peter Vail, Boonsboro, MD |
| HM Grand & Intermediate Champion | Hall’s V-Lane Spectacle-ET | Reynolds | Ashton & Levi Wilcox, Varysburg, NY |
| HM Senior Champion | B-Wil Kingsire Willow | Kingsire | Budjon Farms & Peter Vail, Lomira, WI |
| Reserve Intermediate | Bricker-Farms R Cadillac-ET | Reynolds | Todd, Lynsey, Allison, Lacey & Kinslee Bricker, Carli Binckley & Wyatt Schlauch, Salem, OH |
| HM Intermediate | Davis Reynolds Posie | Reynolds | Ridale Genetics & Legacy Lane Farm, Cummington, MA |
| Junior Champion | Ullmstar-SV R Money Maker | Robinson | Peter Vail, Ernie Kueffner & Maple Downs II, Englewood, FL |
| Reserve Junior Champion | JL-Royal-Ruby Stanley Beckett | Stanley | L: Dylan Ryan; O: Lydia Rasmussen, Fond du Lac, WI |
| HM Junior Champion | Miss Booty Bounce | Rage | Logan Harbaugh, Grant Fremstad & Tim Busch, Marion, WI |
Premier Breeder: Todd, Lynsey, Allison, Lacey & Kinslee Bricker and Carli Binckley, Salem, OH Premier Exhibitor: Peter Vail, Englewood, FL Premier Sire: Palmyra Lochinvar Reynolds-ET Premier Breeder & Exhibitor, Heifer Show: Toppglen Premier Sire, Heifer Show: Bear-Ayr Distinct Kingsire
The Rematch Nobody Forgot
If you were ringside in 2025, you remember the Senior 3-Year-Old class. Judge Greg Evans and associate Jean-Philippe Charest said they got goosebumps trying to separate Trinity and Cinderella. Trinity won that battle, then went on to Intermediate Champion and Reserve Grand. Cinderella settled for Reserve Intermediate. B-Wil Kingsire Willow took the whole show.
Fast forward twelve months. All three were back, and all three made Tuesday’s senior final.
“Plenty of nerves,” Ostrom admitted. “The three champion, intermediate and reserve last year were in the final today, and they’re all great cows and great competitors. We felt like we have a special cow, and she came forward today.”
Hanson didn’t see it as a coin flip. “The top end definitely shuffled out those two four-year-olds,” he said, “then the five-year-old definitely got to the top for us.” That’s Cinderella over Trinity at the top of the 13-cow 4-year-old class, with Willow winning a five-head 5-year-old class and taking Honorable Mention Senior.
Here’s the stat that should make every Ayrshire breeder look twice. Cinderella, Trinity and Willow are all daughters of Bear-Ayr Distinct Kingsire. Kingsire also sired the winning Winter Calf (Old-Bankston Kings Riot-ET), Winter Yearling (Bricker-Farms Cheap Trick) and Fall Yearling (Toppglen Kingsire Play It-ET), and he was named Premier Sire of the Heifer Show. When one bull sires the Grand, the Reserve and the Honorable Mention, he isn’t just producing show winners. He’s setting the type standard for the breed.
The Cow Behind the Cow
Cinderella’s story didn’t start at Milk Source. She’s a Kingsire daughter of Bricker-Farms Gibbs Carvella, the Bricker family’s homebred who became the first living Ayrshire scored EX-95, with an EX-96 mammary. Cinderella sold at the 2023 Shades of Excellence sale for $7,800 to Josh and Samantha Fairbanks and Adam Ludwig. Later, Ostrom said, the partners came to Milk Source.
“They came to us and they said, ‘We’d like you to consider buying part of her, take her to your place, and help her develop,'” Ostrom said. “I can’t thank them enough for that. What an opportunity to be a part of a truly great cow, and that cow family blew the world away today.”
“Blew the world away” is, honestly, underselling it. Look at what Carvella’s family did in one show:
- Carvella herself, at 11, placed second in the Lifetime Component Merit class and was named Senior Champion of the Junior Show.
- Bricker-Farms R Cadillac-ET (Reynolds), last year’s Junior Champion in both divisions, won the Winter Senior 2-Year-Old class as Best Udder, 1st Junior and Bred & Owned. She went on to Reserve Intermediate Champion in both shows and Reserve Grand of the Junior Show.
- Bricker-Farms Cardi B-ET (Reynolds) placed third in that same class and was Honorable Mention Intermediate of the Junior Show. Her Rage daughter, Bricker-Farms Rage Camero-ET, finished third in the 37-head Winter Calf class as 1st Junior and Bred & Owned.
- Three more Kingsire daughters of Carvella, all full sisters to the Grand Champion, showed in the Spring Calf class: Chanel (6th), Cleopatra (8th) and Charm.
- Cinderella’s own daughters are already circulating. Five of them showed in the heifer classes, led by Miss Cinderella Centerfold-ET, 8th in the Fall Calf class for Brady McConnell, Jim and Valerie Spreng and Ack-Lee Holsteins.
Then the Bricker-Farms prefix kept popping up on class winners bred there and now owned by others: Bricker Farms Distinct Champion-ET (Summer Junior 2-Year-Old), Bricker-Farms Strykr Cutles-ET (Milking Yearling) and Bricker-Farms Cheap Trick (Winter Yearling). Add Cinderella and Cadillac, and that’s five class winners carrying one herd’s prefix. The Brickers closed the day with Premier Breeder and the Senior Best Three Females.
Ostrom wondered aloud whether any family had ever done that on a single day at World Dairy Expo. “I suspect it’s probably true, but it’s incredibly rare,” Ostrom said.
‘A Living Legends Class’
Hanson saved some of his best lines for the Lifetime Component Merit Cows. Four cows. The winner was 12 years old, the runner-up 11.
“It’s kind of a living legends class,” he said. “They’ve all done their time. They’ve all won in their own rights in the past. Most of them have all been All-Americans or grand champions before… You always feel really bad who’s at the bottom of that class because you know they’re great cows.”
Ridale Nemo Serenity-ET won it for Ryan and Marjorie Rida and Ridale Genetics of Cummington, Mass., taking the class as Best Udder and Bred & Owned. Carvella was second. Third went to Palmyra Predator B Ruthless-ET for Kurt, Michelle, Cooper and Carter Wolf, and she left with the day’s most useful hardware for breeders: Total Performance Winner of the Open Show and the Holstein Marketplace Sires International Type & Production Award.
Ruthless also has a heifer-show résumé by proxy. Her Kingsire daughter, Old-Bankston Kings Riot-ET, won the Winter Calf class for Shocking Genetics, Katie Shultz and Jeffrey McKissick. So the old cows didn’t just parade. They proved their worth through the next generation, and that’s the only proof that really matters in a breeding program.
Up in the Aged Cow class, Vieux Village G Montana won as Best Udder and Bred & Owned for Florent Foley of Piopolis, Que., keeping the Vieux Village prefix at the front of the class two years after Vieux Village Gentleman Joy was Grand Champion here. Moy-Ayr Berkely Darling, fourth in that class, was named Total Performance Winner of the Junior Show for the Schmidt family of Delavan, Wis.
Spectacle and the Youth Wave
If the senior final was a rematch, the intermediate division was a coronation of a different kind.
Hall’s V-Lane Spectacle-ET, the winning Junior 3-Year-Old for Ashton and Levi Wilcox of Varysburg, N.Y., was named Intermediate Champion of both shows, Grand Champion of the Junior Show and Honorable Mention Grand in the open. Levi, 15, has now shown her to Grand Champion at the Premier National Junior Show and the All-American Dairy Show this fall, a year after she was Intermediate Champion of the Junior Show in Madison.
Hanson clearly wasn’t done thinking about her. “The future of the Ayrshire breed is in really good hands with those young cows,” he said. “You’re going to hear their names again and again and again, especially that three-year-old and them winter two-year-olds. They are phenomenal cows.”
That winter senior 2-year-old class was the division’s deepest pool. Cadillac topped it, Davis Reynolds Posie was second and went on to Honorable Mention Intermediate, and Cardi B was third. Three Reynolds daughters at the top of one class is exactly why Palmyra Lochinvar Reynolds-ET took Premier Sire. Reynolds also sired Spectacle and the winning Spring Calf, South Mtn Reynolds Gee Whiz-ET.
191 Heifers and the Whole Ring
Hanson, judging on the colored shavings for the first time after years of attending Expo, faced heifer classes of 37, 37 and 32 head. Show officials gave him the entire Coliseum ring to work with.
“When you’ve got 30, 37, 40 head in a class, you need to take your time,” he said. “Having the whole ring was really cool… I think in the end it was 190 heifers coming through the ring.” (The official class counts add up to 191.)
The heifer champions:
- Junior Champion: Ullmstar-SV R Money Maker, the winning Summer Yearling, for Peter Vail, Ernie Kueffner and Maple Downs II.
- Reserve Junior Champion and Junior Champion of the Junior Show: JL-Royal-Ruby Stanley Beckett, the Spring Yearling winner. She won her class as 1st Junior and Bred & Owned, led by Dylan Ryan for owner Lydia Rasmussen.
- Reserve Junior Champion of the Junior Show: Miss Booty Bounce, the Fall Calf winner for Logan Harbaugh, Grant Fremstad and Tim Busch. She’s a Rage daughter of Glamourview Bootylicious-ET, who placed third among the 4-year-olds on Tuesday. That’s one more dam-and-daughter double in a show full of them.
Toppglen swept Premier Breeder and Premier Exhibitor of the Heifer Show, and Jeff Atherton of Greenwood, N.Y., won the Junior Best Three Females.
Peter Vail’s name ran through the whole show. He was named Premier Exhibitor on the strength of the Reserve Grand, the Junior Champion, the Honorable Mention Senior and a 1-2 finish in the Milking Yearling class with Cutles and Budjon-Vail Reynolds Kaboom-ET.
Class Winners at a Glance
| Class (Entries) | Winner | Sire | Owner |
| Spring Heifer Calf (37) | South Mtn Reynolds Gee Whiz-ET | Reynolds | Dustin Coppenbarger & Red Dirt Genetics |
| Winter Heifer Calf (37) | Old-Bankston Kings Riot-ET | Kingsire | Shocking Genetics, Katie Shultz & Jeffrey McKissick |
| Fall Heifer Calf (32) | Miss Booty Bounce | Rage | Logan Harbaugh, Grant Fremstad & Tim Busch |
| Summer Yearling (28) | Ullmstar-SV R Money Maker | Robinson | Peter Vail, Ernie Kueffner & Maple Downs II |
| Spring Yearling (21) | JL-Royal-Ruby Stanley Beckett | Stanley | L: Dylan Ryan; O: Lydia Rasmussen |
| Winter Yearling (22) | Bricker-Farms Cheap Trick | Kingsire | Kaleb Cole, Carter Kruse & Lynn Lee |
| Fall Yearling (14) | Toppglen Kingsire Play It-ET | Kingsire | Kyle Barton, Mackenzie Ullmer & Logan Harbaugh |
| Milking Yearling (10) | Bricker-Farms Strykr Cutles-ET | Stryker | Peter Vail |
| Summer Jr. 2-Year-Old (12) | Bricker Farms Distinct Champion-ET | Distinction | Georgia Hazelwood and Kason & Kolbie Ozburn |
| Spring Jr. 2-Year-Old (15) | Arthuracres MW April Fools-ET | Most Wanted | Dave Koss |
| Winter Sr. 2-Year-Old (15) | Bricker-Farms R Cadillac-ET | Reynolds | Bricker family, Carli Binckley & Wyatt Schlauch |
| Fall Sr. 2-Year-Old (12) | Family-Af-Ayr Reynolds Dakina-ET | — | Family Af-Ayr Farm |
| Junior 3-Year-Old (10) | Hall’s V-Lane Spectacle-ET | Reynolds | Ashton & Levi Wilcox |
| Senior 3-Year-Old (12) | Ms Reagan Blossom-ET | Reagan | Austen & Michelle Schmidt |
| 4-Year-Old (13) | Bricker-Farms King Cinderella | Kingsire | Milk Source Genetics, J&S Fairbanks & K&M Wolf |
| 5-Year-Old (5) | B-Wil Kingsire Willow | Kingsire | Budjon Farms & Peter Vail |
| Aged Cow (7) | Vieux Village G Montana | Gentleman | Florent Foley |
| Lifetime Component Merit (4) | Ridale Nemo Serenity-ET | Nemo | Ryan & Marjorie Rida; Ridale Genetics |
What Breeders Should Take Home
Cow families still beat headlines. Carvella’s family put the Grand Champion, the Reserve Intermediate, the Senior Champion of the Junior Show and a string of placing heifers into one show. That takes more than one great mating. It takes a family that transmits, over and over.
Kingsire is the senior-cow sire to beat. Grand, Reserve and HM Senior, plus three heifer-class winners and Premier Sire of the Heifer Show. If you’re building an Ayrshire program for the show ring, that’s hard to ignore.
Reynolds owns the young-cow pipeline. Premier Sire, the Intermediate Champion and the top of the deepest intermediate class. Hanson says you’ll hear these names “again and again,” and the pedigrees agree.
Longevity sells itself. A 12-year-old and an 11-year-old topped the Component Merit class, and a third component cow took both Total Performance and the Type & Production Award. For commercial buyers weighing Ayrshires, those living legends make the case.
The work happens at home. Ostrom gave the credit to the people most spectators never see. “2 a.m. on New Year’s Eve morning, when nobody else cares about cows, there’s people at home that do,” he said. “You can do all you want at a show like this, but if you don’t do it right on those dark nights, it’s not going to matter.”
The Bottom Line
Ostrom said he felt like a participant in “a big step forward” for the Ayrshire breed, and the numbers back him up. Heifer classes needed the full ring. A single cow family filled the champion lineup. And the Grand Champion is just four and already bred back.
What’s next for Cinderella? “She’s four years old, and she’s bred back,” Ostrom said. “So we’ll go that far. We’ll leave it at that.”
Fair enough. The rest of the Ayrshire world is already doing the math.
Official Judge: David Hanson, Nicollet, Minn. Associate Judge: Eric Houdek, Hastings, Minn.
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