The National Herd Development Winter Fair has always had a firm place in the calendar of the Dickson family from Emu Banks Holsteins.
Sisters Rachel, Jacque and twins Anna and Leah haven’t missed an event, whether it has been showing their own cattle or working for Brad and Jess Gavenlock from Cherrylock.
“We have the spring country show season and International Dairy Week in January,” Rachel said.
“The Winter Fair is on at the perfect time when there is not much else happening on the show calendar and our whole family just loves attending.”
The Dickson girls’ love of showing was nurtured by their employee Beth Schultz.
“Our parents [Bryan and Joanne] just milked cows and were never into showing but they were very supportive of us once we took it on under Beth’s guidance,” Rachel said.
“Mum and Dad still come with us today and it has become a real family event for us all.”
While she is committed to the major show calendar, including International Dairy Week and Winter Fair, study and work commitments in Melbourne don’t always allow for more involvement.
“Anna and Leah are definitely more involved in the showing, including sales and photography prep and all the local shows — they both have a really deep passion,” Rachel said.
Growing up on the family farm at Terang, in Victoria’s Western District milking 750 cows, meant there was always cattle work to do — and the girls have always been involved in working hard alongside their parents.
This involvement has ensured the sisters have all developed a love of agriculture in some form or another.
For Rachel, 22, that has been working toward a veterinary degree specialising in large animals, while Jacque, 20, ditched her radiology course and is now working as a bull handler at TLG.
Anna and Leah are both still in secondary school, but Leah has started a veterinary nursing certificate.
“We have all developed our own independence,” Rachel said.
“Growing up on a dairy farm subjected us all to a diverse range of experiences and activities and when I moved to Melbourne, I soon came to realise how great it was to have had an opportunity to grow up in the country.
“My prior experience with cows has certainly helped me out when it comes to working and studying large animals; animal behaviour is sort of universal and farming has certainly helped me hone my skills in that area.”
In 2020, Rachel took a gap year in her studies and headed over to Chester in the United Kingdom to work at Grosvenor Farm, a large-scale dairy operation milking 2200 cows.
She found it quite a contrast to her home farm.
“They had a 60-unit rotary that ran for 21 hours a day servicing six herds. The cows weren’t fed any grain on the platform, that was fed out through the TMR.”
Being a commercial farm and because the cows didn’t have to walk too far, she said there was little emphasis on cow confirmation including leg structure or hoof trimming.
Rachel said cows were calved in maternity wards and taken into boxes, and the colostrum was pasteurised before it was fed.
“It was interesting to see the different diseases the cows under that system were exposed to, especially when it came to the high stocking rate.”
Rachel finds the physiology of cows fascinating and she has spent six months at the University of British Columbia as part of a study exchange for her degree looking at reproductivity in cattle.
She is passionate about the dairy industry and all the opportunity it provides, and she is looking forward too seeing where her own career goes in the future.