Cold in Australia??

6/30/10

 Hello all, sorry our entries have been so long coming, and all at once, but we have been flat out like a lizard drinking! We are staying at Duval College. It is REALLY cold here, compared to the other places we have been. It is in the teens at night and in the mornings, and somewhere around 60 during the days. The showers are really nice, except for the fact that your feet go numb, and will slightly freeze to the floor when they are wet. Today we sat through seminars. I got to meet a few new people during the breaks, and meet up with a few I met last night. There was tons of information! Two things I found very interesting, were how they hung some of their beef carcasses, and all their pork. They will in some cases actually hang the beef by their aitch bone, which helps make the beef more tender. The other super neat thing was that they hang the pork carcasses whole. They don’t split them at all. It’s actually a lot easier to evaluate the pork carcasses whole.  Hope all is well there, take care, and no worries!

Jaymes

6/30/10

Today was the first full day of the conference. It was pretty chilly in the morning, but not bad when you consider it’s the coldest it gets in the winter! Someone said it was -8 degrees Celsius. Had a variety of interesting lectures ranging from meat science to livestock production. A very interesting presentation by the CEO of JBS Australia…Interesting to hear the JBS success story. Also enjoyed a very interesting presentation by the Chief Operations Manager of AACo the largest cattle company in Australia. The company’s total land mass is 7.7 million HA, 1% of continental Austrialia’s land mass! The company’s largest cattle station runs 110,000 head of cattle and the company owns a total of over 500,000 head of cattle…pretty amazing! Getting ready for supper now…I’m sure it will be great!

Cheers,

Jessi

Cheers from Becky and Wade!

6/29/10

How ya goin’?

We started off the day with our third day of breakfast at McD’s. Then we headed off to the Cargill beef abattoir in Tamworth. Tamworth is the Country Music Capital of Australia, although sadly we didn’t get to hear any live music, this is where Keith Urban got his start! At Cargill we evaluated a few beef carcasses, ribs, short loins and some beef primal. After a meal and answered some questions, we headed down the street to the Peel Valley Exporters Lamb Plant. It was very interesting; I had not been to a lamb plant before so it was quite an experience. My favorite part of the lamb plant was getting to tour the plant from live animal to cooler. We also evaluated some lamb carcass classes and answered questions. We then traveled to Duvall College in Armidale. We will be here for 4 days, so we won’t have to live out of our suitcases. We had a good meal and played a little socializing game, more socializing and then to bed. We have had a really great time so far and will have a lot more to talk about when we return! More to come from Down Under

Cheers,

Becky

6/29/10

Today I woke up in the coldest bed I ever have. Whoever said Australia would be hot was so wrong! This morning it was -10 Celcius. After a quick “Brekkie” (Breakfast) at McDonald’s we headed to Cargill @ Tamworth to practice placing beef and eating and pricing classes. Beef is much different down here; I could write a whole essay on how it is but mostly they try to slaughter younger cattle that haven’t been grain fed.

After lunch we practiced and took a complete tour of Peel Valley Lamb Exports. This was very interesting; they slaughter 4200 a day and are only operating 1 shift.

We left Tamworth across the Great Dividing Range for Armidale (even colder than Tamworth). We checked into the contest and spent the evening eating and socializing with our new friends.

To sum it up, we have been having a great time, learning lots, and making friends that hopefully last lifetime.

Cheers,

Wade

Chris and Brogan!

6/28/10

G’day mates. This morning we started an “Early” day at 6:30 and like usual at the Golden Arches. After that wonderful breakfast we drove to the Primo’s Abattoir (beef plant). I learned that quality of Aus. Beef is a whole lot different than the states. They really like high yield beef with just about no marbling in the ribeye, which are very young and very small. After the shock of seeing the size of carcasses and the lack of marbling, we drove to the Caroona feedlot (JBS) and took a look at their operation. After that we drove to Big Pete’s house and had the time of our life. At Pete’s place we had a chance to buy kangaroo belts, and then we went outback and drove to a cabin and had a barbi. Pete’s father cooked up an amazing steak dinner and kangaroo tail soup, which is quite good! After dinner we found a rabbit and chased it around on foot, supposedly an Australian past time. This was possibly one of the most fun things I have ever seen and done! Well that’s all mates!

Chris

6/28/10

Hey everybody! Once again it’s good ol’ McDonald’s for “Brekkie” and as always it’s decent. Once we finished up there it was back in the vans and on our way to Scone, NSW, for our first experience in an Australian processing plant. This facility, owned by Primo’s is a beef slaughter facility that goes through 500 head of cattle per day with a total out of 1600 if a double shift was ran. This was our first shot at doing the Eating Quality Class and a refresher for carcass placing. After a couple hours there, we headed north to again and had another first when we went to the Caroona Feedlot. This was located in a rural area. It depended a lot on the locals to get their sorghum and whole cottonseed, since they don’t grow corn from limited water to feed animals. They can have up to 28,000 head in this JBS Swift operation and carry mostly angus, murray greys, shorthorn crosses, Herefords, and more heavily bos indicus influenced cattle to fill the gaps. It was funny when the silage they stored were completely covered because of a problem with kangaroos hopping across and poking holes in the packing! From there it was driving to the rest of the afternoon to Peter McGilchrist’s family operation.

Right away it was hard not to like anything, especially Doug (Peter’s Dad) came out with handmade belts from kangaroo hid! After milling around at the main house for awhile we went up to a cabin further in the hills to spend a little time cruising around looking at wallabies, kangaroos, and spotlighting rabbits to chase them on foot. Tell you what, when you see a tall person like Lander jumping hanging in the air for what seemed like ten seconds from the adrenaline rush, and then landing flat on the ground with the rabbit just out of reach is hilarious! Somewhere in all of this we went back to the cabin, enjoyed a campfire and some kangaroo tail soup. All in all it was a great time up there and we had to get in the vans to get to our hotel in Tamworth.

Catch you around like rissole,

Brogan

June 27th - Words from Jessi and Jaymes!

6/27/10

Got up early for a great McDonald’s breakfast! Thought I’d branch out and tried a Brekkie Roll (That’s Aussie talk for breakfast roll) Met the Murdoch team mid morning …A great group of GIRLS and three guys all named Peter. They are a pretty awesome and very entertaining group! After meeting up with Murdoch we headed out to the Carrigan Family Ranch (one of the Peters’ home place) The ranch was absolutely gorgeous … Lots of green and flowers in the yard (see Jaymes’ pics … it’s pretty clear Laramie natives don’t see that stuff often haha) After a great lunch of sausage we toured the ranch on the back of utes (utility trucks) …these things are EVERYWHERE down here and they’re pretty handy… I don’t think I’ve seen a legitimate big truck since I’ve been down here. On the tour of the ranch we saw lots of kangaroos, walaroos, and wallabys … the difference between the three has been explained numerous times by numerous people and it’s been different every time so I’m still not sure I understand, but they all look similar and hop.  We made it to Scone for the evening and dinner. At the suggestion of the Aussie’s I tried roast lamb and it was awesome!  They sure know how to cook their lamb down here. It was overall an amazing day! I’m pretty sure I could live down here!

Jessi

6/27/10

Today we met up with Murdoch University.  Jen was the one that picked us up. After we got loaded, Jen decided we couldn’t fit under the overhang, so she decided we would go out the in. The only problem is that the gates were down. So Jen told Lander to get out and jump up and down to open the gate. It was the greatest ice breaker ever, and one of the most comical things you have ever seen. He flailed his arms, in what looked like a terrible attempt at a figure skating move. He finally had to flag down a taxi to pull in and get the gate open so we could get out. Jen ended up taking a wrong turn or two, and nearly gave Lander a heart attack. We went to a fella named Peter Carrigans house. There we learned that there was only one guy on the 8 man team, and his name was also Peter. There is 3 Peters… Big Pete, the Coach, Medium Pete the judger, and Pistol Pete the assistant coach. They are 3 of the funniest people I have ever met. On Pistol Pete’s ranch, The White Rock Ranch, we saw out first roo’s, and wallabies. We took a big tour around the place and looked at most of their cattle.  Then we went to the Pub for dinner. In every pub, they have TV’s with Horse, Harness, and Greyhound races that you can wager on. I had Medium Pete teach me how it worked, and won $23 on my first $2 bet. I ended up on the winning side, making all my money back in addition to a 50 dollar bill. Lady luck was on my side! We are having a great time! It’s a great place with GREAT people!

Jaymes

We made it to Australia!

G’day Mates! The 2010 meat judging team sends greetings from Sydney, Australia. After leaving Los Angeles Thursday night around 11, we landed here at 6:45 Saturday morning. The plane we flew on was the biggest I’ve ever seen: double decker, 450 passengers, and almost 80 meters in wing span. Due to time change differences, we never got to experience Friday June 25, 2010. The flight was long but worth it in the end. We do much today besides study for the contest and walk around the city a little bit. Tomorrow we are meeting up with a team from Murdoch University and will tour a family farming operation.


Wade

Cheers! We made it to Australia! The 15 hour flight was quite the feat, however we were treated very well. The plane was very new updated with the latest technology. When we weren’t sleeping, there were movies, television, audio books and much more to keep us occupied. We were served two meals during the flight, which surprisingly wasn’t bad, and it was “free”. When we got into Sydney, we had to wait for a couple bags that came in on a flight about 15 minutes behind ours.

Once we collected our bags, we wondered around aimlessly looking for a way to get to our hotel. Jaymes asked about three different people how to get there, the reason he had to ask so many people is because he would forget the directions by the time he had to repeat it to us. We walked up and down the strip in front of the airport with all of our luggage, debating whether to walk or to take a cab. We decided to take a cab.

We walked around Sydney a little to find some lunch, walked up and down the strip of local shops about four times before we decided on what to eat. Part of the problem was that no one had Australian currency and none of the shops took Visa. I suppose that is enough for now, we are looking forward to meeting up with Peter McGilchrist tomorrow; he might actually know how to get somewhere!

From Down Under,

Becky

Welcome to UW Meat Judging blog!

This blog will be our contact of our trip to Australia. Please check back often for updates!