Students prove good judges
October 14, 2011
The classroom moved from St Joseph's Nudgee College to Toowoomba for a group of Year 10-12 students recently when they attended a Junior Cattle Judging Competition.
Head of Agricultural Science Mr Tony Jensen reports on the excursion that saw the students achieve success in two of the three categories.
Last Friday saw Nudgee College continue on its winning way in the cattle judging arena. More accustomed to successes in stud cattle judging, six Cattle Club boys were invited to attend the annual Beef Galore 2011 competition sponsored by Grant Daniel and Long, Pacific Seeds and the Commonwealth Bank, to try their skill at judging commercial cattle.
Beef Galore 2011 is an annual competition that invites cattle producers from across the Darling Downs to exhibit commercial steers and heifers in both grass fed and grain fed classes. In addition to the commercial focus of the competition, organisers also invited schools from across the Brisbane metropolitan area and the Darling Downs to compete in a junior judging competition.
The competition saw in excess of 200 cattle placed up for competition with almost as many junior judges taking part in three classes: Under 15 individual judging (junior), 15 and under 25 Individual judging (senior), and group school judging.
Damon McCoy (Year 10), Sam Warby (Year 12) and Tom Russell (Year 11) carried Nudgee College's hopes for the senior individual judging class. After 10 minutes to determine their selection and a quick tally of scores, Sam and Damon had to give their final comments on their selection along with 10 other competitors who were successful in their selections. After some great comments, Sam was awarded Senior Individual Junior Judge for 2011.
Not to be out done, the rest of the boys teamed up for the school group judging. Damon, Tom Thurecht (Year 10) and Gus Walker (Year 10) made up one team of three while Sam backed up and joined Ryan Gundersen (Year 12) and Tom Russell for another. After a tight final selection only Damon and the boys with two other schools were selected to speak with Nudgee College coming away with the win.
It was a great morning that saw Nudgee College take out two of the three possible wins for the competition. Many of the cattle producers present at the competition, representing an immense collective knowledge and understanding of the agricultural industry, congratulated the boys and expressed their appreciation in seeing them show such a great interest in the industry and on their wins.
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