We eventually made it, disembarking pretty much in the way of everything, swarming across the street and effectively blocking traffic for a few minutes. The expo took place in an indoor arena, the farmers and breeders found themselves augmented by 100 vet students tramping around in a massive herd. There were three main areas in the place.
1. There were a bunch of pens set up, one bull each, with narrow walkways between. It was kind of hard to navigate, since all you could see was a maze of metal bars--the walkways weren't easily distinguished at a distance. That is, until they became clogged with vet students. You could definitely see them then.
2. There were, of course, some food stands (including the obligatory hot chips stand) and a bunch of tables. Around the edge of the food area were a bunch of tables and displays with posters, flyers, and booklets about cow stuff.
3. The actual auction took place on bleachers with a pen in the centre for the bull, and the auctioneers behind that.
So the plan was to look at all the bulls, look at their listed genetic values, talk to supposedly knowledgeable people that planned on buying a bull, and then vote on which one we thought would win. We were supposed to pick one beforehand using information off the bull expo website, and then cast a second vote after we'd had a look around. This was slightly pointless because, experts at bulls that we are, they were just vague guesses anyway and pretty much nobody had a good reason to change their mind.
This was the first year they brought the vet class here, and their timing was, to put it nicely, poor. We managed to arrive a good hour before the auction actually started, but we only had about an hour and half there. Walking around looking at the bulls took about 10 minutes, maybe 20 if you really stretched it out and looked at every single bull. After that, it was a combination of sitting on the empty bleachers, and buying food for entertainment. We had at least 40 minutes of spare time.
Finally, it was time for the auction. Or at least, I thought it was. Turns out that before the auction they had a bunch of awards to give out to the prize bulls, which is cool except that there were like thirty awards. The poor lady called out name after name, as people sent up their bored-looking children to pretend to be proud as half the audience clapped apathetically. Bull names are also really weird, and the categories were mostly cow jargon, so I pretty much had no idea what was going on.
Once the auction got going, it didn't disappoint. Beforehand, the faculty felt they should remind us not to try and buy a bull. The auctioneer was classic--in fact he spoke so quickly that it was complete garble. It was just a stream of words shouted as loud as possible. He was so enthusiastic about it that he broke the mic just before we left. The few bulls that we had time to see auctioned sold for about $7,000. The professor mentioned the most expensive bull he'd ever seen was $180,000.
In class the next day, the professor had made a graph of the genetic value versus auction price, and the most expensive bull sold for $28,000. The one I voted for, lot 126, only sold for $11,000, even though its genetics were through the roof. Looking at the graph, she pointed out that the farmers are pretty much in their own little world, because the most expensive ones weren't really the best ones.
The best moment of the trip may have been when it was time to leave. We waited for bidding to end, so we would be between bull sales and not disrupt people trying to buy one. So all at once, a good third of the audience gets up, and as there was only one exit and most of us were sitting on the opposite side, there was a very unsubtle mass exodus across the ring.
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