WORDS // RICK BAYNE
THE SWEET SMELL OF DELAYED SUCCESS
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ndrew Marks has hardly been an overnight success in cattle showing, but the eventual rewards have been sweet. Andrew farms at Dorrigo, about an hour inland from Coffs Harbour, in a family-owned and run business with his wife Natalie and his father Warwick. He’s the fourth generation to farm the land. His interest in cows goes back as long as he can remember, or even further. “I can’t remember when I first started showing dairy cattle; I’d guess it was around eight or 10,” he said. “I was always active on the farm from four or five years old. I was with dad all the time, the same as my young bloke is now. He’s five and he’s often in the tractor with me. “It’s how you learn. The only way I learned was from watching dad. I’d see him do things a hundred times and think I could have a crack at that.” Andrew admits he didn’t have a lot of success in the early years of showing, but he’s hit a rich vein of form in recent years. “I make the joke now that it’s taken me 20 years of standing at the bottom of the line to get to the top end of the line,” he said. This year at International Dairy Week the family’s Winvarl Jersey Stud showed one cow they owned and another in partnership with Simon and Tekoa Atkins of Oakleigh Downs Jerseys, Kingsvale Premier Madge, who won and was best udder in the five-year-old class and was also reserve champion at the Jersey State Show in 2019. Winvarl Plus Diamond was seventh in a class of 14 at IDW. “We were happy with that because it was one of the strongest classes,” Andrew said. In 2018 in the Jersey Australia On-Farm challenges they had three
Winvale Plus Diamond scored well at IDW 2020.
class winners in the Great Northern Challenge, Mikandan Barnabas Mabel 2390 won the 3-year-old class, Winvarl Plus Diamond won the 4-year-old class and Mikandan Surefires Mabel 2190 won the Mature cow class and was supreme champion of the Great Northern Challenge. Diamond went on to become the Great Australian fouryear-old. “I’ve really concentrated in the past four or five years on my breeding program, the bulls I use and I’ve brought in a few cows with good genetics from herd dispersals,” Andrew said. “I’ve been looking for cows that are positive index for milk, positive stature, chest-width and cows with high-indexing udders.” He uses “a bit from all of the companies” when it comes to genetics. “I do my own thing; try to pick the best of everything.” The COVID-19 pandemic has put a hold on showing this year. “We should be at the Sydney show at the moment,” he laments. The Australian Jersey Journal – May-June 2020 // 12
The virus has also stalled Andrew’s training to become a Jersey Australia classifier, although he plans to continue in the field. “I was suggested by one of the other classifiers,” he said. “A few classifiers are going out of dairy or looking to retire, so they’re looking to bring in a few younger blokes.” Andrew was keen to take up the option. “It’s good for my own learning; the day you stop learning is the day you might as well give it all away. “It’s good to get out and about and see different cows and different bulls getting used. “You might be going to a farm to look at cows but you’ll see something totally unrelated, maybe a bit of gear a farmer has made or the way he does something, and you think I could try that at home.” Andrew has attended a couple of class field days, scoring cows alongside others and having results collated and assessed against other experienced judges.
