Youth team get a real taste of International Dairy Week Do you know if your feed Find out at the NZFMA Fieldays

that Julie get a team together and compete at IDW.

AFTER AN absence of two years due to Covid and international travel restrictions, the New Zealand Dairy Youth Team returned to Northern Victoria, Australia recently to compete at International Dairy Week (IDW) at Tatura Park.

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

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.”

In 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 intro- duced to their animals a day before the show so giving them little time to prepare. They competed against 11 other teams, impressing the judges ship support from Jersey NZ and Rabobank. A lot of the youths got indihad not had many shows over the 2020/2021 period of their animals, stayed in caravans on site so they actually got the real expetotally employable in the future.”