Home of ‘The Golden Raddle’

Press, 26 October 1984, Page 9

Home of ‘The Golden Raddle’

The North Canterbury district of Amberley could soon be best known as the home of “The Golden Raddle.”

The Amberley A. and P. Association’s lamb drafting competition, with the change of name, will be held at the district show tomorrow.

The competition, which was run for the first time last year along the lines of the Y.F.C. “hoof and hook” judging concept, seeks to achieve greater recognition of lamb drafters and their work.

“They do a fairly unobtrusive sort of a job, but one which is vitally important to the export-oriented lamb producer and therefore to the entire meat industry," said the convenor of the competition committee, Mr Bruce McLachlan.

“The competition was such a success in those terms that we are trying to broaden it in order to heighten the impact. We see it developing into a very useful national championship,” he said. Transport problems mean that it is far better to have one large competition venue than several separate local ones.

Last year the competition attracted 100 entries including professional drafters from six companies. All participants were offered twelve lambs to appraise for carcas weight, GR measurement, grade and wool

pull. Results were tabulated by a specially written computer programme at Lincoln College. The winning professional drafter was Mr David Adorian, from Waitaki N.Z. Refrigerating, Ltd. Sections for drafters, farmers and the public and the Y.F.C. are to be run again this year, with entries at the show. The concept of the competition has already had an important spin-off. It came at the time of the introduction of the Meat Board’s revised lamb grading system. The opportunity to familiarise producers with the impact of those grading changes was considered most appropriate by the committee and in this respect, the competition has been viewed as something of an industry

leader. Value was seen in drafters and farmers alike, individually assessing this number of live lambs and then seeing them again at the next stage of the processing chain. The three Canterbury export lamb processing companies and the Meat Board obviously endorsed the benefits of the competition — they lent support in the form,of sponsorships. Increased support this year will enable the committee to offer substantial prizes to the winners. Some animal health product has also been made available by

a leading supplier. “While it contains a competitive element with professional drafters mostly scoring between 80 and 90 per cent of the possible, the real value of the event is as a learning experience,” said Mr McLachlan. “That was clearly apparent in the large numbers of professional drafters, farmers and Y.F.C. members alike who turned out at Belfast after the week-end to view the carcases and hear the competition results,” he said. The Amberley Show comes appropriately at the start of the new lamb drafting season and it helps farmers and drafters get an early feel for the job ahead of them.

Within the Y.F.C. section last year there were open and school classes. This recognised the role of Young Farmers in developing this competitive stock judging concept. “We consider this to be very important. These students are the breeders of our export lambs in the future and it is critical that their breeding philosophies are formulated in the context of the requirements of the marketplace. They found it a valuable learning experience — a good way of putting theory into practice — and fun too,” said Mr McLachlan.

As an exercise, competitors in the Y.F.C. classes entered their estimates on

to a microcomputer at the show — a practice which could later be extended to other classes and could be helpful in terms of verification of each competitor’s entry. Y.F.C. membership codes allow individual scores to be used for inter-club, interdistrict and even inter-re-gional contests, with the three highest scoring cards in each category automatically representing that club, district or region.

An open “teams” event, run with similar coded cards, attracted interest in the public class last year. This competition is being organised by a young aiid enthusiastic committee which would like to welcome competitors from as far afield as they care to come.

So far, interest has been expressed from both ends of the South Island as well as the Te Kuiti area. The Amberley Show is an apt location for the competition. Two past presidents of the association were involved in developing this stock judging concept originally for the Y.F.C. The Amberley area is a traditional producers of high quality export lambs; the association has penned over 408 lambs at its shows in the past and for over 30 years, local drafters have been competing for their Drafter’s Cup at the show.