Half these farms won’t exist in 20 years. But watch these kids at 5:47 AM—they’re not learning to show cows. They’re learning to lead an industry.

I’ll never forget standing in that wash rack before dawn, exhausted and covered in soap, when the truth finally hit me: This was never about the cattle.

It was about who we become when nobody’s watching.

I was fourteen, third year competing at what was then called the Scotiabank Hays Classic. I’d just placed third in Intermediate Showmanship—respectable, not remarkable. But what moved me most wasn’t the ribbon. It was what happened in those quiet hours before the crowds arrived, before the judges appeared, before anything counted.

Younger members from another county team started seeking me out during those early-morning wash sessions. Not because anyone told them to. But because in those cold morning wash racks, we all learned the same truth: You survive this together, or you don’t survive it at all.

“Can you help me?” they’d ask. “How do you stay calm when everything goes wrong?”

That’s when the weight of it landed—the kind of responsibility that changes you. I wasn’t just competing anymore. I was becoming someone others looked to when the pressure got real.

The Winter Everything Almost Fell Apart

The courage it took to walk away from security still catches my breath when I think about it.

By my late twenties, I had everything society says matters. Six-figure consulting salary. Professional prestige. A clear path forward. Three generations of our family had built a Master Breeder operation in southern Ontario. Dad spent nearly three decades revolutionizing Holstein Canada’s genetic evaluation system. His philosophy wasn’t just words on his office wall: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

But there I was. Following. Following someone else’s dream while mine withered.

My wife’s faith saved me. When I told her I couldn’t do it anymore—couldn’t keep trading my soul for a paycheck—she didn’t panic about the money we’d lose. She believed we’d figure it out together.

So I came home and started building from nothing. A marketing agency from our kitchen table. Within five years, we’d grown to serve four Fortune 500 companies. But even that success felt hollow. The pull back to dairy—to the industry that raised me—was too strong to ignore.

Why David Beats Goliath in Canadian Dairy

Here’s what shouldn’t make sense but does.

Canada has roughly 9,000 dairy farms, according to Agriculture Canada’s latest count. The United States? Over 30,000. We have 1.4 million dairy cattle. They have 9.4 million.

By every logical measure, we should be irrelevant. A footnote in global dairy genetics.

Instead—and this still amazes me—Canada exports between $155 and $178 million in dairy genetics annually. Our Holstein genetics consistently rank in the top three globally. We achieve the world’s best carbon efficiency at 48% below global averages.

How does a country a fraction of the size punch so far above its weight?

Look at who’s leading Canadian dairy. The vast majority came through 4-H programs like the Classic. That’s not a coincidence. That’s what happens when you systematically build leaders from age twelve up.

Curtis McNeil proved it. Won the Classic Grand Championship in 2005, the same week he captured Holstein Canada’s President’s Cup—first person ever to claim both. Today, he’s earned three Master Breeder shields, serves on Semex Alliance’s executive board. When he returned to judge the 2024 Classic showmanship, watching 300 teenagers compete, he called it “the best showmanship class I have ever seen in my life.”

Tyler Canning, 2022 Grand Champion. Nadia Uhr, 2024 Champion, after five years of competing. The pattern repeats across hundreds of Classic alumni now leading every major dairy organization in Canada.

The Conversation That Keeps Me Awake

But here’s the hard truth these kids deserve to hear, even though it hurts to say it.

Based on current consolidation trends, industry analysts project that approximately half the dairy farms operating today won’t exist when these teenagers are thirty-five. Not because farmers failed. Because the economics became impossible for mid-size operations.

In the United States, mega-dairies with 2,500+ cows now produce 46% of milk while representing just 3% of operations. Technology isn’t optional anymore—robotic milking, AI monitoring, and precision agriculture demand millions in investment that most farms simply can’t afford.

The world these kids are entering is exponentially harder than what I faced.

So what do I tell those 300 teenagers preparing for the 2025 Classic, knowing what’s ahead?

Don’t be afraid to change the world. Use what you’re learning here to take on the world. And remember—the bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.

Some will leave dairy. That’s not giving up—it’s using the judgment skills we learned right here. Sometimes the bravest decision is recognizing when to pivot toward where your skills create more impact.

What Really Happens at 5:47 AM

Standing at the Royal Winter Fair last November, watching the 41st annual TD Canadian 4-H Dairy Classic, I saw myself in every teenager preparing their calf in those pre-dawn hours.

The wash racks at dawn tell the real story. Three hundred teenagers from counties across Canada, all preparing for classes that start in two hours. Premier County championships hang on every point. The competition is fierce.

But watch what actually happens: Competitors from rival counties stop their own preparations to help someone who is struggling. They share equipment without being asked. They teach techniques to direct competitors. They offer encouragement when frustration peaks.

Nobody mandates this. No rules require it.

This is simply who we are. Who we’ve always been.

Those people beside you at 5:47 AM become your professional network for the next forty years. When you need someone who understands the weight of impossible decisions, when you need truth without judgment, you call someone you showed against decades ago. That trust—you can’t manufacture it in boardrooms or build it through LinkedIn. It’s forged when you’re all exhausted, scared, and determined not to let each other fail.

Why I Had to Build The Bullvine

The moment that changed everything came when I was thirty-five. February 2012. Two weeks from initial idea to launching The Bullvine’s first article.

For that entire first year, I did not seek advertisers. Complete editorial freedom mattered more than financial security. People thought I’d lost my mind. Looking back, maybe I had.

But every skill I needed to make it work came from those years competing at the Classic. Making split-second decisions when your calf won’t cooperate and five hundred people are watching. Getting up the next morning after not doing as well as you had hoped. Walking back into that ring knowing you might fail again.

That’s the real training. Not for showing cattle—for life.

Today, The Bullvine reaches over 400,000 monthly readers. It’s become dairy’s most essential, most provocative platform. But what matters more is what it represents: proof that skills learned at fifteen in a show ring can build something at thirty-five that changes an entire industry’s conversation.

The Network That Will Save Everything

What happens at the Classic doesn’t stay at the Classic. It builds the collaborative tissue that makes Canadian dairy globally competitive despite our size.

When Canadian dairy organizations pioneered genomic selection—doubling genetic progress rates—it succeeded because people who’d competed as teenagers trusted each other as adults. Research institutions, AI organizations, breed associations, and progressive breeders are all collaborating across traditional boundaries.

That web of trust, built at 5:47 AM in wash racks over shared exhaustion and determination, drives Canada’s outsized global impact. You can trace nearly every major innovation in Canadian dairy back to relationships formed in 4-H.

What These Kids Really Need to Know

Parents watching their children compete face an impossible question: How do you prepare kids for an industry that might not exist when they’re ready to take over?

Here’s what my journey taught me: You’re not preparing them for dairy farming. You’re preparing them to navigate complexity and uncertainty with grace. Whether they lead dairy operations, genetics companies, technology startups, or ventures we can’t yet imagine—they’re learning to drive change rather than be consumed by it.

For ten years competing, I thought I was learning to show cattle.

I was actually learning to make impossible decisions with incomplete information. To find hope when logic says quit. To lift others when you’re barely standing yourself. To persist when persistence seems pointless.

These aren’t cattle skills. They’re survival skills. The same ones that let you leave a secure job with young kids depending on you. Launch a media platform that everyone says will fail. Tell uncomfortable truths that an industry needs to hear. And somehow find a way to make it all work.

My parents always said 4-H was our stepping stone for learning. From projects that taught responsibility to giving reasons that built confidence and public speaking skills, 4-H became the cornerstone of everything that came after.

The Real Legacy Forged at 5:47 AM

Standing at the Royal last November, I saw myself in every teenager preparing their calf in those pre-dawn hours.

5:47 AM. Three hundred teenagers from across Canada. Premier County championships hang on every point. The competition is fierce.

But watch what actually happens.

I saw a young woman from western Ontario helping a first-timer from the Maritimes who couldn’t get all the soap out of her calf. I saw a senior competitor from Ontario lend clipping equipment to someone from Alberta whose clippers failed.

Nobody mandates this. No rules require it. No one is keeping score.

This is simply who we are.

Those people beside you at 5:47 AM become your professional network for the next forty years. When you need someone who understands the weight of impossible decisions, you call someone you showed against decades ago. That trust—you can’t manufacture it in boardrooms. It’s forged when you’re all exhausted, scared, and determined not to let each other fail.

Three hundred teenagers. One cold November morning. The future of an industry that statistics say shouldn’t survive.

But we will. We always have. Not through miracles or magical market corrections.

Through each other.

That’s the harvest that matters most—not in the field or barn, but in the people we become together.

The road will bend. It always does. But if you use what you learn here—really use it—you’ll make the turn. Trust me on this. I’ve made that turn several times now, and each time I’ve drawn on skills learned standing exactly where these kids stand today.

In a world that often forgets, this is what we’re really teaching in those wash racks at dawn: How to be the person someone else needs when everything feels impossible.

The cattle were always just the excuse to bring us together.

The humans we become in those moments before dawn—that’s the real legacy.

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

• Your competition at 5:47 AM becomes your career safety net at 35: The teenager you help in the wash rack today calls you with the opportunity that saves your farm in 2040
• Canada’s secret weapon costs nothing: We export $178M in genetics with 1/3 the farms because rivals helping rivals at dawn creates trust that boardrooms can’t buy
• The skills that matter aren’t about cattle: Walking into the ring after public failure, making decisions while 500 watch, lifting others when you’re drowning—that’s the real curriculum
• “The bend in the road is not the end”: When half of dairy farms vanish, Classic alumni thrive because at 14 they learned the difference between quitting and pivoting
• The cattle were always just the excuse: Building humans who understand collective success beats individual achievement—that’s why 4-H kids run Canadian dairy

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