DESPITE the Perth Royal Show being cancelled this year one competition which has still gone ahead is the Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) Future Sheep Breeders Challenge and the WA College of Agriculture (WACOA), Denmark, finished on top.
This year's competition marked the fifth year it has been held.
It is a collaboration between AWI and the Stud Merino Breeders' Association of WA (SMBAWA), which have continue it to make it an educational platform as well as a level playing field to give all schools an equal chance in the final judging.
The competition is usually decided at the Perth Royal Show but this year the final judging was held at the conveniently-located WACOA Narrogin last week.
The schools that participated in this year's competition included WACOA Denmark, WACOA Harvey, WACOA Cunderdin, WACOA Narrogin, Kelmscott Senior High School, Edmund Rice College, Bindoon and Kiara College.
Each school's team of four students was responsible for preparing four Merino wethers to show condition over the past six months.
The teams selected six wethers from the Barloo stud, at Gnowangerup, during an educational day in March, which included handling and selection demonstrations from Elders' Russell McKay.
Since then the students have paddock-run their sheep and were required to select an even group of four to take to the final judging at Narrogin where they presented them.
The students were assessed as they prepared their animals to show ring standard.
The wethers were later shorn and fleece measured using an OFDA machine by Jeff Brown, Elders Narrogin, and weighed and valued for their wool and carcase attributes before an overall winner was announced.
WACOA Denmark had two teams in the competition and for the second year in a row won first place overall, as well as first and equal second in the wool measurement category and third in the sheep handling and preparation category.
WACOA Denmark farm manager Kevin Marshall said the college's win was testament to the students' hard work.
"After seeing our students put a whole lot of effort in, it was great to be able to get some sort of conclusion to the exercise, despite COVID and the Perth Royal Show being cancelled," Mr Marshall said.
"We're in a high rainfall zone but because we've got pretty good feed and have very little dust in our pastures it allows us to keep the wool clean and with a high yield.
"We're very grateful to the organisers for forging ahead with the challenge and to WACOA Narrogin for going to the trouble of hosting the event."
Part of the winning team, WACOA Denmark Year 11 student Tia McGuffie said there was a great atmosphere on the day.
"It feels good to have won this competition knowing the amount of work students and farm staff have put into our sheep leading up to the event," Ms McGuffie said.
"We had one training session, as our team was already experienced in what we were required to do."
Fellow Denmark Year 11 student Hamish Bowie said it was good to see his team's hard work pay off.
"Our sheep showed excellent characteristics throughout the wool," Mr Bowie said.
"Our sheep were not the biggest but had good depth of wool and body shape."
SMBAWA representative and competition co-ordinator Grantly Mullan said the sheep were "well presented by all the schools and it was great to see the students being very active in their participation on the day".
"With the wethers all based on the same breeding and all sourced from Barloo it also gave the students the chance to see and learn how different environments can impact the production traits of sheep of the same breeding," Mr Mullan said.
"As an organisation we believe the competition is a great learning tool for the students and we are happy to be involved in it with AWI."
WACOA Narrogin farm manager Stephen Madson said the participation from all schools was great, with some of them even bringing extra students along to help them prepare for the challenge next year.
"The challenge has been running for about five years and by the time COVID hit, each school had already invested in buying Merino wethers for the program so we thought we should go ahead with it," Mr Madson said.
"The students were judged on things such as the wether's hoofs and the comfort and value factor of the wool."
Dyson Jones' Tim Chapman, one of WA's most experienced wool brokers, was a guest judge at the event.
