Tumut High School dominated the Charolais show ring at Canberra Royal, capped with the supreme exhibit award.
Ryce Coralie 16, bred by the school, took the 12-16 month female class, junior champion female, and then pushed aside the female senior champion, Airlie Kelly K145E exhibited by Joshua and Jordan Fenech, Brownlow Hill, for the grand champion female broad ribbon.
Recently retired Tumut High ag teacher, Tony Butler, who is still involved with the school’s cattle program, and students watched in astonishment as the judge, Donna Robson, Flemington Limousin stud, Adelong, announced Ryce Coralie the supreme winner.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Mr Butler said. “That’s a great consolidation for the whole cattle proram at Tumut High.”
The school’s Charolais herd was built from Palgrove bloodlines but Coralie was a home-bred success.
Mr Butler said Tumut High’s cattle program had gained an underlying financial foundation when it won $200,000 in the NAB School First Program in 2012.
Visy Industries had also come on board providing 36 hectares for the school to run its Charolais herd.
The land had now been pasture improved and fenced.
Sharon Nesbitt, Curragindi Charolais, Cooma, took reserve champion bull honours with Curragindi Nulla.
The reserve champion junior female was Stoney Creek Kelly M1E exhibited by Joshua and Jordan Fenech.
The Fenechs took the senior female broad ribbon with Airlie Kelly Ki45E, who beat Tumut High School’s Ryce Estella into reserve place.