SARAH Fawcett, a pen rider from the Kerwee Feedlot at Jondaryan was recently a finalist in the 2011 Pfizer Medal, awarded each year to a person in the feedlot industry who has demonstrated excellence in operational skills.
Sarah came to the feedlot industry with a wealth of experience gained on her parents' mixed farm, which included a small piggery, at Rollands Plains, 30km from Port Macquarie, NSW.
This rural environment provided Sarah with an ideal lifestyle to ride her horses, work with cattle on the property and look after her dogs.
She attended secondary school at Pittsworth High until Year 11, when she realised her ambition was to work and live in rural Australia.
She undertook a full-time traineeship in horse husbandry, completing a Certificate III in Agriculture at Oaklands Horse Stud at Southbrook on Queensland's Darling Downs.
After completing her traineeship, Sarah started work at Kerwee Feedlot, where she has relished the opportunity to advance her skills, experience and qualifications in the feedlot business.
Since being employed in the feedlot sector, Sarah has found the perfect mix of a career that allows her to use her love for horses and horsemanship, while enjoying working with cattle and pursuing her dream to live and work in rural Australia.
Her enthusiasm to work with cattle, horses and the rural lifestyle has fuelled Sarah's passion for the feedlot business, where she sees an industry being forward thinking in areas such as animal health and welfare.
She has also set herself several goals that drive her passion for the industry, which include growing an animal in the feedlot to the highest possible quality, while providing the best healthcare for the cattle in her care.
Sarah is a great advocate for vaccination programs for cattle entering the feedlot. She said she would vaccinate all cattle before feedlot entry in order to eliminate stress and enhance immunity for cattle going on to feed.
Another part of the feedlot industry Sarah loves being involved with is diagnosing stock and ensuring the correct treatment regimes are applied.
She finds the application of good animal health practices rewarding, and enjoys helping animals make a full recovery. In expanding her knowledge on animal health, Sarah is planning to undertake a Certificate III in Animal Health in the near future.
Since becoming involved in lotfeeding, Sarah has seen the strengths the lotfeeding industry has to offer.
She believes lotfeeding is the most sustainable and efficient way to produce red meat protein. Sarah said the efficiencies in converting feedstuffs to muscle tissue in the feedlot enabled a much shorter time frame to turn off cattle.
"Feed conversions in performance fed cattle are now in the order of four to five kilograms of feed for each kilogram of live weight gain on a dry matter basis," she said.
"The efficient use of water and crop by-products such as straw are beneficial to agriculture and the environment.
"The feeding systems used today enable a wide range of beef product lines to be marketed with varying degrees of eating quality, offering beef consumers around the world the choice to select their meal options on a broad scale of grades."
Sarah said the Australian feedlot industry was among the leaders in animal welfare and the industry nationally was committed to continually trying to improve animal welfare standards.
However, every industry is not without its challenges. Sarah sees the biggest challenge faced by lotfeeders and the Australian agricultural industry as being public misconceptions about lot feeding practices and livestock management.
Her solution to this public misconception is the need for ALFA to have more faces out in cities promoting the positive and good management practices lotfeeders applied each day when looking after livestock.
"We also need to ensure good animal welfare practices in all sectors of our industry, and seek to continually raise our standards," she said.
Sarah is passionate about promoting the Australian lotfeeding industry as a sound, long-term career move for young people.
"ALFA needs to have young ambassadors promoting the lot feeding industry to young people both in the country and the city as the way of the future," she said.
"By young people being part of the lotfeeding industry, they will gain a real sense of achievement in growing food for people."
Sarah has achieved many milestones during her career, but has a few more goals in mind. She wants to learn as much as possible about lotfeeding through work experience and tertiary study, where she is completing her certificate III in pen riding. She is an ambitious woman with a view to having her own cattle breeding and background operation.
Sarah wants to learn and absorb as much information as possible so one day she will have the knowledge and resources to secure her own land, breed quality cattle and background them until they meet entry specification for particular feedlots.
One of her most enjoyable tasks is the stock work and mustering cattle.
Changing the flytraps at the feedlot was one of the least enjoyable tasks.
Sarah paid tribute to her parents for guiding her in life and instilling the values and work ethic she has today.
Kerwee manager Jim Cudmore has also guided her in the right direction for study while freely imparting his knowledge of the industry to Kerwee staff.
Sarah also thanked two of her work colleagues, Dennis Jones and Brad Riddle, who have taught her much about feedlot practices and operations.
Another passionate feedlotter
Another finalist in the 2011 Pfizer Medal was Jeremy Sloss, a leading hand in the feed mill operation at the Grassdale Feedlot, owned by Mort and Co near Dalby.
Jeremy has been employed at Grassdale Feedlot since 2009, starting as a feed truck driver and working his way up through loading, to become a bunk caller.
Jeremy is a real country boy at heart. Growing up on a grain-growing property near Bowenville on the Darling Downs provided him with first-hand practical knowledge on how the grain industry worked in Queensland.
Jeremy moved from Bowenville to Dalby, where he attended high school.
After leaving secondary school he started work on Booths' chicken farm.
The owners of this business had a lucerne and cattle farm near Beaudesert south of Brisbane as well as a cattle property at Mitchell in Western Queensland.
While working for Booths, Jeremy undertook a number of different roles, which provided a useful background for his later career in the feedlot industry.
On the Beaudesert property, Jeremy gained experience in the intensive growing and finishing of chickens destined for Steggles. He learnt to mow and rake lucerne for baling and was also involved in mustering cows and calves at weaning time on these properties.
Jeremy also travelled to the property at Mitchell where he would be located for many months feeding cattle hay and molasses and cutting down trees for feed as well as undertake all other farm duties.
Since joining Grassdale Feedlot, Jeremy has put this experience to good use driving loaders, monitoring cattle health, stock work, and mixing feed.
He says his daily work schedule is great, as he has always enjoyed being around cattle. So the opportunity to work with cattle every day and manage their progress is a real bonus that keeps his enthusiasm for the job going.
Jeremy says that one of the most rewarding experiences in his job is seeing a pen of cattle be inducted into the feedlot, watching them grow, and eventually leave the feedlot knowing the staff at the feedlot have looked after the cattle the best they could.
Working in the feedlot, Jeremy sees the positive strengths and worth of the National Feedlot Accreditation Scheme in practice to make sure every part of the business is achieving top results.
He sees the advantages of having feedlots spread across Australia to intake cattle when Australia is adversely affected by drought.
"Having worked on cattle properties that solely relied on grassfed pasture to grow and finish cattle, I recognise the great strengths feedlots offer to control a great number of cattle safely in one place that are always growing steadily," he said.
Recently Jeremy had his first experience at attending an ALFA conference, which he says has left a lasting impression on him with some great memories.
He found listening and learning from the presenters at the conference a rewarding experience. He would urge as many feedlot managers in the future to assist young feedlot workers to be able to attend the biannual ALFA conference to help them to see and hear speakers, especially from overseas.
One of the challenges in the feedlot industry Jeremy highlights is the potential for animals to become unwell. Jeremy was very interested on the presentation at the ALFA conference about a feedlot system used in Canada.
He believes the Australian industry could benefit from the Canadian system presented, which consists of weigh cells placed around feed and water with animals traced with a chip so the computer can register every individual.
When an animal did not eat and only went to water, the computer would realise there was something wrong. The system helped manage the cattle's health and welfare by being able to identify potentially stressed animals before pen riders did.
Jeremy always found the classroom a struggle and left high school in Year 10 to pursue a career in agriculture. But despite his aversion to the classroom he excels at on-the-job practical learning and has obtained his loader ticket and has nearly completed his Certificate III in Rural Agriculture through TAFE Queensland.
Jeremy is committed to gaining more eduction in the feedlot industry and is interested to learn more about commodity purchasing and handling.
His daily work schedule includes a mixture of tasks he enjoys such as bunk calling and monitoring cattle for health and growth rates while he is less excited about capping hay.
Having worked in the cattle industry for some time both in the range-fed and the lot-fed sector, Jeremy considers the best breed of cattle for Queensland is the Santa Gertrudis as he notices this breed can handle the heat and grain stress a lot easier than others breeds.
While working at Grassdale Feedlot, one of Jeremy's co-workers, Alex Smith, has been instrumental in passing on his knowledge about feedlot operations, which has enabled Jeremy to build on his skills.
