WEST ALLIS (NBC 26) — Inside the barns at the Wisconsin State Fair are animals large and small, some taken care of by proud exhibitors who traveled from our neck of the woods.
Ryah Brandt, a Manitowoc County 4-H member from Manitowoc, showed her goats at the fair Thursday.
"It feels great," Brandt said. "I did pretty good in my first class and I'm about to go into my second class."
Brandt said she's been showing goats for seven years. This is the second time she's been an exhibitor at the Wisconsin State Fair.
In addition to showing, Brandt said she also breeds and sells goats.
Her love for showing started at a young age, when Brandt's cousin asked her to help with a bottle baby. That moment brought her full circle to where she is today.
"My favorite part about showing is probably the thrill about being in the show ring and making a lot of memories with a lot of people that are here," Brandt said.
Down on Dairy Lane, Stephanie Love, a Brown County Junior Holsteins member from De Pere, prepares to show her project animal; a winter calf named Presley.
“I started working on a dairy farm when I was 13, and that really kindled my love and passion for the dairy industry," Love said.
It's a passion that first started with showing horses and eventually transitioned to dairy cows. Love said she's been showing dairy cows for four years. This is her second year showing at the state fair, alongside nine others from Brown County.
Educating the public about the industry is one of her favorite parts about the state fair.
"Most people don't grow up on farms. They don't really know where their milk comes from and I think it's a really big thing to show people where their milk comes from, and just give them a good idea, a good picture of what the dairy industry is," Love said.
Love will be a freshman at UW-Green Bay this fall and plans to study marketing and communications. She hopes to land a job within the dairy industry.
Brandt will be a freshman at Fox Valley Technical College this year where she's set to study dairy herd management.
The Wisconsin State Fair continues through Aug. 14.
