THREE days of work experience on a sheep farm in the eastern States gave young gun Kelly Gorter direction and inspiration to decide on a career path within agriculture.
Originally from Kojonup, Ms Gorter grew up on a mixed farm with cropping and sheep operations and like most country kids left the farm to attend boarding school in Perth.
She said despite the school not promoting a career in agriculture to it's students, she knew that was the field she wanted to work in.
"As with most private city schools, they tended to push more of the lawyers, doctors and accountant sort of careers," Ms Gorter said.
"But I always knew I wanted to come back to agriculture so I took a gap year and ended up working in the piggery at the WA College of Agriculture, Cunderdin, for 8-9 months - that was a bit different but I really enjoyed it."
When she decided to look for a university there were only a few agricultural options.
"I have never really been that keen on cropping and so for an ag related degree in WA it was either agribusiness at Curtin, ag science at UWA or animal science at Murdoch," Ms Gorter said.
"Muresk was closed at that point so unfortunately that wasn't an option.
"I prefer livestock so went with animal science, which I studied at Murdoch for two years before deciding that it wasn't really working out for me, so I began too look at other universities and ended up moving to the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, to continue animal science."
She spent three years there, finishing at the end of 2017, with honours in her final year.
Early in her final year, she created an opportunity to do some work experience with "a business in Southern NSW which offered electronic ID data collection and management services among other things".
"Through-out my time at university I didn't really know what I wanted to do but those three days of work experience really inspired me," she said.
"It sounds really cliche but I thought to myself, this is really cool, this is what I want to do."
Ms Gorter said she never thought she would suit an office job and being stuck behind a desk, so those three days demonstrated a career with "a great balance of on-farm, in the field data collection and office-based data management and analysis to then make informed, data driven decisions on individual animals which I think is a great tool to have".
"Why run an animal that is less productive if you have ones that cut more wool and wean more lambs?'' she said.
"If you measure how each animal is performing you can make decisions on it.
"I think the best decision I ever made was going over east to university - that was a massive move for me.
"I didn't know anyone over there, I hadn't even visited the university before I started, so that was huge, but it turned out to be the best thing I did.
"Agriculture over there is quite different to what I was used to and being up on the tablelands as well, the climate was all backwards with summer being their growing season.
"It is more livestock intensive and the countryside is not suitable to cropping on the scale we do here.
"If they do any cropping it's summer crops which again is quite different to our normal.
"And cotton - the first time I saw cotton and trying to get people to explain it to me, it just blew my mind!"
She said when she graduated, she found that "eID consulting was not a huge area, no one who worked in that space was hiring, so I came back here (WA) and thought let's go get a bit more on-farm experience".
She applied for a job successfully with Clayton South, Wagin, "graduated one week and started the job the next" and moved to Wagin.
She said on the farm, while it was majority cropping (about 70:30), they ran a commercial Dohne sheep enterprise, consisting of 4500 ewes as well as 2000 ewe lambs.
"Everything is eID tagged and I knew Clayton had a bit of gear and was utilising the eID tags, so I came here for the experience," she said.
She said Mr South's adoption of technology has given her the ability to "use the eID equipment on farm", which has been "a real advantage".
"I see it and use it in everyday situations and learn from the difficulties we have and see what works well and some different ways of doing things, so it's been good like that."
Although employed mainly for the sheep side of the enterprise, she said she does get "roped into driving the airseeder and chaser bin and a few other cropping related jobs".
"I enjoy the variety in the workplace - I love just being back out on the farm, getting to do all those basic things you take for granted as a kid and miss when you go off to boarding school and uni," she said
In November last year she launched her own business, KG Livestock Services, offering eID data collection and management services, as well as advice for farm businesses wanting to implement eID tags but who didn't know where to start.
"Lots of WA producers are interested in eIDs but aren't sure what they need or how it all works and want someone to help them through the process, so that's what I am offering," Ms Gorter said.
She said data management or data submission to breed databases could be time consuming or confusing so she also offered those services for farmers who "want to use the data they've collected but don't have the time to sit down and sort through it all".
"I've also recently partnered with Smart Shepherd to offer proximity sensor collars which identify which lambs belong to which ewes over a 48-hour period of deployment," she said.
"This enables producers to calculate the number and kilograms of lamb weaned per ewe and potentially select for better lamb producing ewes.
"It is a great tool for studs as it gives them parentage without having to manually mother up but also interesting for commercial producers to identify twin bearing ewes who may have lost a lamb but are still wet or those that have raised both and done a good job on them."
She said working for Mr South full-time and running her own business on the side was not a problem.
"Clayton has been great - from the start he knew this is what I wanted to do so he is really flexible with me going off to do jobs and so on as they come up," Ms Gorter said.
"I'm just starting slow - finding my feet and making sure I get it right so at the moment it is not a huge amount of time away from the farm.
"The data management stuff I can do at home on the computer so I don't necessarily need to take time off work for it.
"He has also allowed me to hire out some of his gear, such as our fleece weighing gear and lamb marking weigh box, which I am very grateful for."
She said if things worked out she would slowly build the business until it became a full-time workload.
"I don't know how long that will be or when, but that's what I'm working towards," Ms Gorter said.
"In the mean time, I love the balance I have between being on the farm and bringing what I see as an excellent management tool to my fellow WA producers."
More information: contact KG Livestock Services on 0409 060 065 or at kelly.gorter@hotmail.com
