During the Royal there was certainly a lot of talk about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.  He was the butt of many jokes and, to be frank, the guy is messed up.  If it was not for fact that he has money and family supporting him he would probably have been committed.  He is one-step away from being the sideshow headliner between The Elephant Man and The Bearded Lady.  But instead he is the mayor of the fourth largest city in North America and has become an international sensation.  The same can be said about the Bullvine.  Over the past 2 years we have become the talk of the dairy world and not always in a positive light.

You see, just like Mayor Ford, we strive to make things more interesting.  We have done and said things that no others in our profession would ever touch.  (Legal note:  We have never smoked crack, we don’t have an excessive drinking habit and have not been seen with a prostitute).  However, those things aside we do share some similarities with Mayor Ford.  One of which being that to those from the outside looking in we appear to have gone from being a car crash, to a ten car pile-up, to a scene in a disaster movie where space junk flies out of the sky, crashes into an overpass, it tumbles over, crushes a bus.  Well at least that is what some of our competitors and detractors would like you to think.  (Read more: Supermodels, Show Cows and the Future of Dairy Cattle Breeding, Genomics – Lies, Miss-Truths and False Publications!,  Why I Don’t Care If You Like Me and The Bullvine: Wanted Dead or Alive)

However, what they, and others are missing, is that in less than 2 years we have gone from nothing, to the most read daily dairy media publication in the world.  What producers around the world are saying loud and clear, and what other publications failed to pay attention to is that they would rather read something with an opinion, something that makes them think, than read the same exact story on every website, and then have to read it again a month later in every different magazine.  They are saying that they don’t care if we (mostly me) piss off photographers (Read more: No Cow Is Perfect – Not Even in Pictures, Dairy Cattle Photography: Do You Really Think I am That Stupid?  And Has Photo Enhancement Gone Too Far?) hothouse herds (Read more: Has Genomics Knocked Out the Hot House Herds? And The Hot House Effect on Sire Sampling) and the status quo (Read more: Reality Check – Who is Really Controlling the Dairy Breeding Industry?, Don’t Hate The Playa, Hate the Game! And I’m Sorry, But I’ve Had Just About Enough Of…, as long as you give us something interesting to read.  Unfortunately for Rob Ford, interesting has become outlandish.  There comes a point when the good you do is outweighed by the sheer load of stupidity.  When Ford lost sight of his values and began to believe that the position he held gave him a might-is-right authority, he turned from a front-line city leader to a front-page headline.

Of course there is more than just reading, there are pictures.  Our competitors like to make fun of me laying down in the “piss,” and are not willing to get down in order to get the best picture possible.  They love to make fun of us, but as the viral nature of our pictures on Facebook show, breeders around the world appreciate the effort.  There’s a fine line between laughing stock and picture perfect. Besides I ask you “Don’t real dairy farmers get piss on them every day?”  (Check out more pictures in our gallery, The Royal Flue – Did you catch it? and World Dairy Expo 2013 – Memories to last a Lifetime)

The Bullvine Bottom Line

While many have seen my tactics since launching the Bullvine to be somewhat of a circus act, our readership, the community we have built around the Bullvine is very real.  In the beginning many of our competitors were quick to write us off saying there was no chance we could survive let alone thrive.  They laughed and scoffed at us.  Then slowly but steadily we have gone from the rebel upstart to the source for unique coverage of all things that matter to milk producers around the world.  The key thought for all to remember is “what matters.”  Whether you’re Rob Ford, The Bullvine or a 24-7 dairy producer, you need to keep a clear head about where your priorities are.  Success is built on knowing where you’re going rather than having to defend where you’ve been.  Therefore the Bullvine will continue to provide insight, analysis and perspective on what matters most to people who are passionate about the dairy industry.  That is why we have and will continue to have the largest daily dairy media readership!

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