THE Harvey Beef Gate 2 Plate Challenge field day was back in action at the Lyon family's Willyung feedlot, Albany last week.
The challenge is now in its seventh year and despite there not being a field day in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenge itself has continued.
In this year's challenge, there were 50 entrants with a total of 62 teams.
The teams are made up of one heifer and two steers and attendees at the field day are provided with an update on how the teams are performing in terms of weight gain.
Sandy Lyon said he was happy with how the cattle were performing.
"They have done reasonably well, I am happy with where they are at currently," Mr Lyon said.
"The heifers have another week and the steers have another two to go so they are progressing well.
"Normally we weigh the cattle two or three days before the field day, but due to the warmer temperatures over the past week, we only weighed them yesterday (March 22)."
In total the average induction weight across all teams entered when weighed on January 19 was 336.07kg, with steers averaging 336.40kg and the heifers 335.40kg.
When weighed the teams in total averaged 436.49kg, with the steers at 441.35kg and the heifers at 428.24kg.
This equated to 100.42kg average weight gain across all of the teams, with the steers gaining 104.95kg on average and heifers gained 92.84kg.
Comparing to last years results, the overall average of all the cattle entered in the competition when weighed on March 13, 2020, was 424.85kg for steers and 416.49kg for heifers.
The largest weight gain from this year's competition was shared between a team of Angus entered by AS & M Campbell and a team of Gelbvieh/Greyman and Angus/Brangus by Mountain Valley Livestock.
By the halfway mark, both teams had gained 134kg, with the Campbell family's team having an average starting weight of 346kg which increased on average to 480kg, while the Mountain Valley Livestock team had an average induction weight of 338kg, going on to average 472kg.
Pardelup Prison Farm had the next greatest average weight gain for its team of Angus/Gelbvieh, starting at 327kg on average and gaining 123kg to weigh on average 450kg.
The next best weight gain was 122kg and was achieved by an Angus/Simmental team entered by the Western Australian College of Agriculture, Denmark.
The heaviest team at induction and at the midway point, was the WACOA, Denmark team of Angus/Simmentals with a weight of 396kg at the start of the challenge and a current weight of 518kg.
