Youth team gets taste of International Dairy Week

IDW is the largest annual dairy cattle sale, show and expo in the southern hemisphere comprising of seven National Breed Shows and a National Youth Show with 1000 head of cattle competing for recognition and the chance to be Australia’s Grand Champion.

It all started back in 2017 at the NZ Dairy Event held at Manfield Park, Feilding, when NZ Jersey president, Julie Pirie had a conversation with Victorian dairy farmer Anthea Day who was attending the show. Anthea thought the Youth Team were doing quite well and she suggested that Julie get a team together and compete at IDW.

The IDW Holstein National Youth Challenge is a Competition involving all aspects of the show ring (clipping, parading/ handling and judging).

Each team must have three youths under the age of 15 and no more than three over the age of 18. Jersey NZ provided some sponsorship through their youth committee and advertised for expressions of interest from youths throughout New Zealand.

“In 2018 we took our team of 12 youths to compete at their first IDW event,” says Pirie.

“This proved to be quite a learning experience and having to borrow animals to lead and parade.”

2019 the Youth Team ventured back to IDW with a lot more knowledge and had a lot more practices leading up to the event. However, the team were only introduced to their animals a day before the show so giving them little time to prepare. They competed against 11 other teams, impressing the judges with their commitment and team work and took out the top prize.

In 2020, with sponsorship from Jersey NZ and Lewis Road Creamery, they were invited back to defend their title and were placed second.

Late in 2022 Pirie started thinking that the Youth Team needed to travel back to Australia to compete again. The 2023 team consisted of 10 youths and had sponsorship support from Jersey NZ and Rabobank. A lot of the youths got individual sponsorship and milking jobs to get funding for themselves. Briar Booth was the 11th person and Pirie got her into the Illawara Australia Team which meant she could still participate but not with her fellow Jersey NZ team.

“This year, we were a little less prepared and went with a less experienced team,” says Pirie.

“We were place 6th out of 11 teams. This was related to the fact that we had not had many shows over the 2020/2021 period for the youths to learn at.” Pirie says she was reasonably pleased as the team was really good and gelled together well. For the first time, five of the teams (older youths) travelled to Tatura Park earlier and helped breeders with the preparation of their stock.

They were there for the entire week and got to see all of the competitions including the Grand Final. They got to lead out one of their animals, stayed in caravans on site so they actually got the real experience of IDW.

“It was quite a thrill for them, such a great way to learn and according to their parents, they came home buzzing,” Pirie says.

She believes being a part of the Youth Challenge is a great way to get youths into farming if they want to be involved in the industry.

“They learn so many life skills in terms of organisation, hard work and responsibility and it opens them up to be totally employable in the future.”