The 2023 Royal Adelaide Show was a huge week for livestock exhibitors but it was also a busy time for Mid North based scanner Rachel Chirgwin who was making sure the judges had more than looks to go on when finalising their placings.
She had the year off from showing her own Suffolk sheep but scanned about half of the meat sheep in the shed (320) as well as 228 Merino school wethers with the results on the placards available to the judges.
She also weighed 240 goats and for the first time scanned 15 pigs in a trial.
About 18 years ago Ms Chirgwin started having the sheep from her Curlew Valley Suffolk stud carcase scanned for Sheep Genetics but it was a serendipitous moment 13 years ago that would see her holding the ultrasound scanner herself.
"I was always watching my scanner (Steve Milne) thinking gee I would love to learn to do this," she said.
"One year I lost my job as a stock agent when the company got sold and he really started quizzing me and I really started quizzing him and I found out that he was looking for someone to take his SA run on and it was something I really wanted to do."
With her can-do attitude she has not looked back working with Advance Livestock Services for a decade before going out on her own in 2021.
Each year Ms Chirgwin clocks up nearly 100,000 kilometres, largely in SA but also Vic and NSW, plus an annual run into Qld scanning goats.
"The people that I have worked with and the experiences I have had, the country, the sheep- it is exciting," she said.
Ms Chirgwin was just 16 years old when she started showing cattle at the Adelaide Show for Glen and Lindley Trengove, Broughton Park Shorthorn stud, Spalding and says the show is a great annual catch up.
"The company I used to work for used to do the sheep contract so it flowed on for there, I love goats and pigs and sheep so I am always happy to have the challenge," she said.
"I started at the show scene with a cow family but now I feel like I have a cow family, a goat family, a pig family and a sheep family."
In the past decade she says it has been remarkable the growth, particularly in eye muscle depth of show shed scans of sheep.
"When I started scanning the highest animals have high 30s now the highest scanned here this year was 56mm," she said.
"But what is really interesting is the ones doing Sheep Genetics, recently the White Suffolks have started shifting to putting more genetic fat on their animals and we are now noticing some animals that are scanning with quite a lot of fat."
Ms Chirgwin says she enjoyed the challenge of scanning pigs at the 2023 show after being approached by Australian Pig Breeders Association.
"Some of those breeds which have clearly been working on getting that balance a bit better had a really good balance of fat and muscle but some of the traditional breeds had quite a lot of fat to muscle ratio," she said.
"Pigs have been doing back fat testing for quite a few years even in commercial piggery but I think eye muscle is an area that they will continue to focus on."
APBA president Linton Batt says with 10 exhibitors from four states the Adelaide Show was a good chance to test the ability to scan pigs of different breeds and different ages.
"We are keen to keep showing relevant to the commercial industry," he said.
"Some of the visual assessments we can make with the naked eye are not always right, especially for eye muscle."
The APBA undertook a similar trial at Sydney Royal Easter Show and also processed some of the pigs to compare the scans with the carcase data.
Next year Mr Batt says the plan is to introduce an objective measurement class which may also be replicated in Adelaide next year.
"We are going to create a class in Sydney for under seven month old pigs and measure eye muscle,intramuscular fat, P2 fat and probably rib fat as well," he said.
Mr Batt from Bungendore Berkshire stud, Beverley, WA says scanning information will enable the industry to identify stud pigs within different breeds with superior eating quality and therefore apply greater selection pressure.
"Pork is already delicious but if we can find those pigs with the right degree of fatness or more marbling we can increase the juiciness of the product so the consumer has a great experience every time," he said.
