2019 Dubbo Sheep Show

Dubbo Sheep Show – RRHC wins award RRHC win Australian Wood Industry award recognising teams for educational outcomes being achieved, fantastic effort by our students and Mrs Ford for providing these opportunities for our students. Richmond River's Agriculture classes prepared our seven wethers for the Rabobank School Wether Challenge in Dubbo again this year. All of the wethers for the competition were sourced from one line of sheep from Egelabra Merino Stud and were picked up from Dubbo earlier this year. Approximately 30 schools from across NSW, made up 60 show teams of approximately 200 students who presented 200 wethers in the challenge this year. There were many activities for the students to be involved in throughout the days of competition including parading, shearing, condition scoring, fat scanning, junior judging, wool classing, etc. We were fortunate this year to receive a lesson around junior judging for sheep from an industry expert and be able to watch other Merino judging events that were taking place.Students also had the opportunity to speak to many Merino breeders and industry representatives from sheep feed, equipment and chemicals companies throughout the challenge. Our students have come home with the new feed ration that we are going to try next year.Overall Richmond River has greatly improved our results from last year with one of our teams being selected to 'stay on the mat'. This means that they were judged to be one of the best teams in our section of the competition. Our students were commended for doing such a fine job in preparing the wethers in a Northern Rivers environment to such a high standard.On our way home we stayed overnight at UNE Agriculture. We visited their research feedlot and the animal science facilities. Thank you to Sally Sterlitz for organising this.I would like to thank our junior show team who travelled to Dubbo with me for the way that they behaved, presented themselves and represented our school throughout the trip. Congratulations to all of you.I would also like to also thank Ben Watts from Bralca for organising this event for schools to compete in and Egelabra Merino Stud, Warren for providing all of the sheep given to schools for the duration of this competition. The drought is devastating in these communities and the generosity, encouragement and support shown to our students throughout this challenge was overwhelming.Sally Ford | HT TAS