MERIDEN — To owner Angela Toms, Mill Bridge Farm is a “4-H project gone right.”

Toms, a physician, and her husband, Chris Forman, a software engineer, built the barn that houses 11 Guernsey cows in 2018, after their four children joined 4-H and got hooked on showing livestock. The farm, located on Main Street in Meriden, now produces ricotta cheese and champion cows.

In October, Sara Forman, 16, and her mom flew to Madison, Wis., for the World Dairy Expo, or WDE, to show their 2-year-old cow Sassy, who made the over 2,000 mile round trip on a trailer.

“This was never in the plan,” Toms said, “We’re flying by the seat of our pants and we’ve been incredibly lucky.”

Known for the colored wood shavings (which were pink this year) covering the show arena floor, the WDE is the most prestigious of cattle shows.

More than 55,000 people attended the event and 2,500 dairy cattle were housed on the grounds of the expo, including 211 Guernseys, according to WDE’s 2024 event summary.

“If you want to be with the best of the best, it’s Wisconsin,” said Seth Johnson, who worked for the American Guernsey Association, or AGA, for 18 years and owns Howacres Farm in Tunbridge with his wife, Shannon.

Seth Johnson judges shows, so he knows what to look for in a cow, and from the moment he saw Sassy, he thought she was “spectacular.”

“You want them to be big and deep ribbed and have good legs,” he said, “and she was all of those things.”

Guernseys are intermediate in size, “excellent grazers”, and produce milk with high butter-fat content, according to the AGA.
At WDE this year, Sara Forman and Sassy placed first in their class for the junior show and second out of 10 in their class for the open show.

“For a small farm like us, being able to achieve that is unreal,” Forman said.

Sassy had a winning season at local and regional fairs as well. At The Big E in West Springfield, Mass., she was crowned the Grand Champion Guernsey cow. At the Cornish fair in August, she won Supreme Champion, the title given to the best dairy animal of the whole fair.

“Being able to win at your home fair is really nice,” Forman said. The wins are especially exciting because Sassy is “homegrown,” Sara Forman said. Sassy, her mother, and her grandmother were all born at Mill Bridge Farm.

The Toms/Forman family credits its success to the strong livestock showing community in the Upper Valley, especially Seth Johnson.

In 2013, Sara’s older brother Will Forman wanted to show Guernseys because his great-grandfather, an Irish immigrant, raised the breed in California. Toms called the AGA to get in touch with a local expert and ended up chatting with Johnson.

After finding them a calf to buy — Sassy’s great-grandmother, Sunny — Johnson became a mentor for Toms and her kids.

The Johnsons’ two children are the fifth generation of Shannon’s family to live at Howacres, which also is home to about 30 cattle, including Guernseys, Holsteins, Jerseys, Ayrshires and Brown Swiss. It’s also home to 200 “fancy” chickens that they show as well, Seth Johnson said. They sell beef to friends, and some breeding stock, but the farm isn’t their main source of income. Seth is a sales associate for Phibro Animal Health, a company that sells minerals to animal feed mills and Shannon is a teacher at Hartford High School. Both Seth and Shannon grew up in 4H showing.

“The Formans are always up for an adventure so I pushed them to go to bigger and bigger fairs,” Johnson said.

For shows, cows are split into classes based on their breed, age and whether they’ve calved. There are junior classes for participants under 21, and open classes, which are open to people of all ages.

At a show, the cows are led around an arena by a show person (often donning white pants) with a rope attached to a halter. The judges approach the cows and examine the shape of their bodies from the placement of their udders to the angle of their hooves.

“It’s a beauty pageant for cows,” Sara Forman said.

Showing is not just about breeding a genetically beautiful cow, a lot of work also goes into caring for award-winning livestock.

“A lot of it is to teach the kids skills and responsibility,” Seth Johnson said. “You can’t sleep in on your hobby when it’s a live animal.”

Besides the typical chores that come with owning cows, such as milking, feeding, cleaning stalls and filling water buckets, show cows also must be halter-trained, and their diet and exercise closely monitored.

“Putting them on a halter and walking them around is a daily occurrence by calf age,” Sara Forman said.

The two families continue to work together, including by sharing trailers to transport their livestock to shows outside of the Upper Valley.

This year, Johnson and his 15-year-old daughter, Sylvia, brought a 5-year-old Guernsey named Kiya to WDE. Sylvia and Kiya won second place in Kiya’s class for juniors and fourth in Kiya’s class in the open show.

“I really love dairy cows and I love working with them,” Johnson said. “When Angela and us go to the fairs, sometimes she wins and sometimes we win, but we’re excited either way.”

Emma Roth-Wells can be  reached at 603-727-3242.