An aspiring Murray Grey breeder competing in the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW Youth Show junior judging for the first time won this year's competition.
Jacob Merrick, 15, hails from a 40 hectare lucerne farm in the lower Hunter Valley where he has also kicked off his fledgling registered Murray Grey herd under his business name of TMJ Pastoral.
The family business produces about 20,000 small bales of hay a year for the horse sector.
Until now, he had only won a couple of local shows, as well as last year's Shorthorn Youth Show intermediate championship, held in Dubbo.
The Saint Catherine's College of Singleton student may have only recently dipped his toe in the Sydney judging competitions, but this was also his sixth year showing cattle.
Reserve was Angus Johnson, Dubbo.
The judge Hannah Powe, Cargo, was looking for their confidence and clarity and when they're speaking.
"My champion and reserve were really confident and clear," Ms Powe said.
"They were really accurate in their observations and they used comparisons which is the key criteria when judging it."
She said what got them to the top and made them stand out was they made it a bit more conversational and also made it relevant to industry, as well as including the scans and performance data "where as a lot of the others didn't pick up on that".
"Key things for me definitely as a comparison, which I gave a lot of feedback on to kids to start comparing animals, not just saying all the good things about (their placings) 1, 2 and 3."
