Following another successful summer season of thought provoking and educational training at various workshops held across the UK and Ireland, the Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society is now in full flow planning the National Final for the Youth Development Programme.
Rotated around the UK and Ireland, this year’s final will be hosted at the Peterborough Showground of the East of England Agricultural Society and will take place on the 24th and 25th September.
The two-day event will encompass a wide variety of tasks for those finalists who have obtained high enough scores from their summer workshop and will host various workshops open to any of the YDP workshop participants from this summer.
The Final weekend will also see the launch of a brand new YDP uniform for the finalists. Each finalist will be given a YDP tie and shirt in line with the new brand colours for the programme, which will be worn with black jeans for the final competition. “In line with the new YDP logo which was launched at the start of he year, we decided to incorporate a uniform for our YDP finalists to give them some brand identity. We’re no longer requesting that finalists wear white coats for showing as we feel this is more of a modern look. It’s hoped that when our YDP finalists step in to the rung throughout the summer and winter circuit they wear this style of uniform to help further promote the YDP,” explains co-ordinator Gayle Bersey.
Judges have been confirmed with the clipping and presentation section falling in to the capable hands of Robert Wilson and Boomer Birch. Robert hails from Romany Herefords fame and has had a coveted career breeding Hereford cattle. He has competed and won at regional and national level and is an experienced judge.
Boomer, who alongside his job as Cogent’s beef specialist, breeds Hereford and British Blue cattle, is no stranger to winning form in both the show and sale ring and knows all too well the work required in bringing out a champion.
Judging the ring craft proceedings will be Matthew Goulding of the Co Kerry-based Goulding herd of Aberdeen-Angus. Matthew is an experienced judge in Ireland and having seen his sons compete in many young handler finals and YDP workshops, he knows first hand the pressure these youngsters will be under to shine in the ring craft section. Matthew has celebrated yet another good year in the show ring taking the reserve overall championship at Tullamore and the junior championship at the All Ireland Championships this year.
Meanwhile, taking charge of the stock judging section will be Roger Long, Norfolk, while the senior panel interview will be handled by the Society’s chief executive Johnny Mackey, YDP chairman Mark Pilcher and YDP Final host and past trainer William Haire.
“The line up for this year’s final is incredibly exciting as we have a team of judges bringing individual and very different experiences to the table. We’re indebted to William Haire and his team at Peterborough for hosting the event and look forward to welcoming many PDY enthusiasts to the final weekend, as well as those competing,” adds Gayle.
The event celebrations will also host the raffle prize for this years exciting prize, a heifer kindly donated by Kevin Moores of The Moss herd, Formby. This heifer will be won by one of the lucky participants who has attended a workshop throughout the summer.
