It may have been school holidays but ten students from Mount Gambier's Grant High School were learning some important life lessons at the SA Junior Heifer Expo at the Adelaide Showground last week.
All first-time entrants and most from non-farming backgrounds, they spent the week gaining confidence , independence and learning to work together, as well as learning more about the beef industry.
Grant High School's Cattle Club has undergone a resurgence in popularity with more than 40 students, largely Year 8, 9 and 10's this year, after dwindling to only a handful of interested students just a few years ago.
They are busy preparing steers for the Melbourne Royal Show in late September and the Mount Gambier Show in October and have also branched into showing chooks.
Rellum Farms Simmental stud principal Grantley Muller -who is a part-time groundskeeper at the school and supplied many of the animals- said the Expo was a great chance for some of the Cattle Club members to grow further.
He also hopes it will further develop their love of agriculture.
"Without encouraging young adults out of the city and other walks of life we are not going to get enough people working in the agriculture industry, because it is so diverse it is vets, it is stock agents, it is truck drivers not just farmers," he said.
Mr Muller was also the main driver in Grant High School establishing a Simmental stud more than a decade ago.
Although they only have six breeding cows they have had plenty of success with it, including one of their bulls winning supreme exhibit at the 2020 Simmental multi-vendor National Sale.
"It is a tool within the curriculum for the students to see and learn and experience," Mr Muller said.
The school's agriculture teacher Scott Cram said the Expo had been invaluable giving the students contacts across Australia and also a chance to learn from young people in the beef industry close to their own age.
"The instruction they have got about looking for structure, all the show techniques, cuts of meat, all the quality assurance part, it has been a wonderful experience," he said.
"The biggest thing they learn because it is a big four days is some resilience which is lacking in some of the areas of the education system nowadays."
For Ryan Bald who has previously attended the Mount Gambier Cattle Handlers School and the Mount Gambier Show, the Heifer Expo was the next step.
The 16-year-old "loved it to bits".
"Having the animals at the school has been an absolute gamechanger, not really paying attention in class on Friday second lesson I get to go down to the ag farm and do something that I love," he said.
Shaylah Cole, 14, said it was an "exciting experience" especially placing second in her handlers class.
"I have never been around cattle much before, I have only just moved out to a farm so it was a first for me but I have loved it," she said.
Sixteen-year-old Monique Allen who also had no experience with beef cattle before joining the school's Cattle Club said the Expo had "been a blast".
"I thought being in a rural town having a bit of animal experience was a good idea and may help me get into a veterinary course which I want to follow in the coming years," she said.
Mr Cram says they "may need a bigger truck" next year with all the students keen to participate again.
