2025 butter cow exhibit unveiled at the Ohio State Fair
Scott Higgins talks about hard-hatted construction cows and workers at the 2025 butter cow exhibit unveiled at the Ohio State Fair
The 2025 Ohio State Fair butter cow display was revealed on July 22.A team of six sculptors spent approximately 400 hours creating the display using 2,000 pounds of butter.
The lights dim. A hush falls over the crowd. Spectators shift anxiously.
The curtains rise.
The 2025 butter cow theme for the Ohio State Fair is revealed.
On July 22, a crowd gathered at the state fairgrounds to witness the reveal of this year’s butter cow and calf, along with the 2025 construction theme of other sculptures. The theme nods to work underway to renovate the Dairy Products Building, part of a larger plan to update the fairgrounds.
The butter cow is practicing safety first and has a hard hat on, just in case.
Three butter-based construction crew members work alongside the cow and calf, which is also wearing a hard hat. The workers and cows are positioned between various construction equipment, like cones, scaffolding and a jackhammer.
In the center of the construction sits a sign, also sculpted from butter, that reads: “Pardon our dust.”
The sign is not all that different from the nonbutter poster hanging in the building that reads: “Pardon our dust. Bigger and BUTTER things are coming in 2026.”
The renovation of the Dairy Products Building is part of stage one of Expo 2050, a multiyear renovation project for the Ohio Expo Center & State Fairgrounds. The renovation will reorganize the layout of the building, install air conditioning and provide additional amenities to enhance fairgoer experience.
Eugenia “Jeannie” Martin is the project director from Hill International. She, along with countless others, has been working to make Expo 2050 a reality.
“It was a lot of fun to see,” Martin said. “It is nice to see them embrace the fact that we are on the grounds for two years and that they are celebrating what we are working on right now and what is to come for the future.”
Housing, and forming, the cows and their friends is no easy feat. It requires a 36-foot-long refrigerated display case, where sculptors bundle up to go to work every July. While the sun scorches the fairgrounds, butter-cow sculptors shiver in their jackets in the Dairy Products Building.
The building also houses educational material that promotes the work of the more than 1,300 dairy farms in Ohio.
“The butter cow tradition is something that Ohio’s dairy farmers are very proud of. It is an opportunity to celebrate their industry and showcase some of the great things they are doing,” said Jenny Crabtree, senior vice president of communication with the American Dairy Association Mideast.
The butter cow is a 122-year-old tradition that started as a butter-sculpting contest in the early 1900s. Since then, the torch has been passed to the American Dairy Association Mideast, which now sponsors the creation and housing of the sculpture.
For those who have never seen the slippery creations, the butter cow display is a yearly spectacle at the Ohio State Fair. One cow and calf are formed out of butter, along with an array of sculptures of a specific theme. In previous years, the themes have paid tribute to everything from elite athletes to Darth Vader.
The sculpting of the 2025 butter cow was led by Paul Brooke of Cincinnati. He was accompanied by Tammy Buerk of Oregonia, Erin Birum of Columbus, Matt Davidson of Sidney, Joe Metzler of Hamilton and Gabriela Schmidt of Akron.
It took the team of six roughly 400 hours to complete the display. Two thousand pounds of butter were layered and carved onto a wooden and steel armature to form the sculpture.
This is the 15th year that Buerk has worked on the butter cow. Buerk, a horse-mane braider by day and butter sculptor by night, has been bundling up daily to put her butter-carving skills to the test. She mostly worked on the calf but said, at the end, it was all hands on deck.
“It was neat. The construction workers would come through here and check things out while we were working,” Buerk said. “The big burly, hard workers — it was interesting seeing them kind of giddy. They seemed to really like it.”
The butter used to make the construction site came in 55-pound blocks from a creamery in Texas and was donated in part from the Dairy Farmers of America. Unfortunately, butter of that quantity isn’t produced in Ohio.
When all is said and done, the butter will be recycled into nonedible productions.
The butter cow will be open to fairgoers in the Dairy Products Building throughout the fair from July 23 to Aug. 3.
Reporter Sarah Sollinger can be reached at ssollinger@dispatch.com.
(This story was updated to add in new information.)