Deni is state’s top performing school

Deni High’s Year 11 Agriculture students were among 500 involved in the program this year, representing 58 schools.

Each participating school is allocated six wethers from the same age drop, from Egelabra Merino Stud.

Students were responsible for the health and wellbeing of the wethers, adjusting their diet and, monitoring their weight gain, teaching them to lead with the aim of producing a commercially productive animal.

Each school’s efforts are judged at a gala challenge day, with students attending with agriculture teacher Emily Pearn last month.

The wethers were placed into two teams and were judged on their restocker value, wool value and carcass value with the results for all three adding up to a combined value.

Deni High’s ‘team A’ was third in the region for the carcass value, and third for the combined value.

The team also took out best fleece of all the schools combined.

Complementing the wether challenge judging, students participated in workshops on stock handling, pregnancy scanning and agriculture careers.

They could also inspect top quality Merino rams and ewes being judged at the National Merino Sheep Ram and Ewe competition.

“The students were fantastic representatives of Deniliquin High School, and it was a great opportunity for them to engage with industry leaders and network with students from other schools,” Mrs Pearn said.

“The school would like to thank Elders Deniliquin and Rivalea stock feeds for their ongoing support and feed donations, and the organisers of the NSW School Merino Wether Challenge.”