COLLEGE CALENDAR
COLLEGE CALENDAR
Kate Oleszko has just
graduated from a
four-year Agriculture with
Animal Science degree
course at Harper Adams
in Shropshire
ITS really quiet back at home now that everything has settled down after finishing college. Even my annual summer holiday has passed – a week at the Royal Welsh helping show cattle (and propping up the Stockmans Bar, of course).
It was great to be back at the event after the dreaded foot-and-mouth last year. It was also nice to see that the paperwork and stringent disinfection rules didnt put too many competitors off.
I was helping the people I worked for on my placement – the Tudors, of Coppy Farm, Denbigh – and Tuesday was the big show day for the commercial beef cattle. The heifer we were showing was in the first class of the day (the baby beef class at 8.30am), with our bullock appearing a few classes later.
We were up at 5am to muck out, feed, wash the cattle and get them dried, brushed up, their tails groomed and styled, hooves cleaned and sprayed and all the other jobs on time.
The heat coming off the blowers as the cattle were being brushed and dried, along with the smell of shampoo and hair care products, reminded me of being at the hairdressers.
Typically, just as judging began, so did the rain. And it poured. We all stood around the edge of the ring with big umbrellas, hoping it would only be a shower and would soon pass. We ended up getting third with the heifer, so it ended up a wet but successful morning.
After watching the championship, we all headed to the Stockmans Bar – and then the NSA bar – to celebrate. I caught up with friends I hadnt seen since before I went to New Zealand last summer as well as some pals from college.
Meanwhile on the job front, Ive havent made a lot of progress this month. Ive started looking for a milking/farming job for the time being, but even they seem very hard to come by locally with milk prices as poor as they are at the moment.
Im also considering carrying on with my education and studying for a Masters qualification in a dairy-related subject or even working back in New Zealand. Decisions, decisions, decisions.