Aussie food....gettin better! ;)

Today was another really educational day. We started off the day by having a bit of breakfast at the hotel. This morning we all phoned home from the Ipad’s since we had free internet connection. It was good to at least say hi . We headed out and went to the sale yard in Wagga Wagga. The sale yard was definitely different from America. The auctioneer didn’t really auction anything. They more screamed out numbers. The buyers all had desks with phones too. Like I said, it was an extremely different set up. They can run 500 head of cattle through the yards in an hour. They were very efficient. The data was all up electronically, so they didn’t say much about the animals they just sold them. This picked up the speed on how fast they sold each lot. I wish I could say more about the sale yards, but I was in the back and couldn’t really hear the guy that was speaking with us.

Something that was cool about today was that we got to see a completely integrated system on all different levels. These steps were all the way from the feed yard to the packing plant. After we went to the sale yards, we went across the street to the Cargill abattoir (in American terms a slaughter plant). JBS (the slaughter plant we visited a couple days ago) is Cargill’s biggest competitor. Cargill is an American company, so it was interesting to see the comparisons between the two slaughter houses. One thing that was really weird was that they process the reticulum and omasum. Delicacy! They also process a lot of tongue and tail.  I would say more technical differences, but just like I did with JBS I want to respect Cargill’s privacy.  This tour worked out a lot better because they were able to break us up into small groups, so that we could hear the tour guide. They employ around 4,000 people and have 600 at the Wagga Wagga plant. 

After visiting the plant, we headed to have a nice lunch in the town of Temora. I had lasagna. Delicious! We got an hour to do a bit of shopping. That would have been really cool had there been any shops in that town. Anyways, after eating we headed out to the Cargill feed lot. We all felt at home at the feed lot. The cattle were being treated with HGP and operated in the way that a Kansas feed lot would be ran. It was mostly black cattle which is different than the farms we have went to so far. They were running 15,000 head with a capacity of 17,000 head of cattle. Something that is very different is that feed lots are required to do  a washing process. This gets most of the mud off of the animal before being processed. If we did that in America, we would be scrubbing for a while! Haha No they just spray them down with a couple hoses before slaughter.

Tomorrow we head to Sydney! It is a 5 hour drive, so the blogging will probably be limited again with no WIFI. Until next time good day mates!

Katelyn

More Farm Tours In The Land Down Under!

Today was a busy day in Australia! It seems to be getting busier and busier each day. The food is also getting better and better! Thank goodness. I thought I was going to famish there for a while!

This is our group at the Emu ranch!

We got to see some of the Albury night life last night. We all had a really fun time spending time together. It is amazing how well our group really gets along. It is like we are all family! I know that I will definitely miss all of them when this experience is over.

Having fun in Albury

The day started out with leaving the hotel, getting some breakfast, and another long bus ride to see a sheep farm called Trigger Vale. This sheep farm owned around 4,000 head of Moreno and white face Suffolk lambs. They were extremely focused on performance data. The wool was unbelievable. Never will I feel wool like I felt today. It just blows our wool out of the water. It was so soft and so clean!  There was also an adorable bottle lamb that was running around the farm for us to pet and take pictures with.

Me and the baby lamb Tom! :) 

After the sheep farm, we headed to Marrocka Emu Farm. This was definitely an experience! We came up to the pasture to see them, and they all started ffighting. I don’t mean like pecking every once in a while. It was hardcore attacking each other. It was kind of scary, but it was normal because it is mating season and they are extremely territorial. We also learned that they use the Emu’s mostly for the oil they produce. At this particular farm, he said those Emu’s would produce $25,000 annually in just oil production. Plus, they lay green eggs! How cool is that?! They also served us a nice steak lunch before we left. The scenery was once again very beautiful.

The Emu's were fighting! 

After this we rounded out our night at the Spry Shorthorns. This was, in my opinion, the best cattle operation we have seen thus far. They had really nice stock at this facility. The bulls that were presented for us to see were very high quality. One of the bulls just got done winning the Sydney Royal. This farm was extremely well versed on the industry and educated us very well. After we got done learning about their business, we had yet another steak dinner. This steak was different though. It was our first grain fed steak we have ate in Australia. It was a really good tasting steak! After the dinner, we sat around and enjoyed ourselves talking amongst ourselves and the owners of the operation.

Kara and I at the Spry Shorthorn Ranch!

Like I said today was a busy day, but we are all having such a great time. There will be more to come tomorrow!

Katelyn

Day 4 all around the farms!

Today was a long and wet day! We kicked off the morning by trying to blog at McDonalds. Unfortunately, this did not work out. We did still get to eat a good ol fashion American breakfast…aka hotcakes! 

After eating breakfast, we got on the bus for a couple of hours and headed to Lawson Angus Ranch. This is a ranch that has a partnership with Gardner Angus Ranch located in Kansas. This was cool to see some cattle that had genetics that were cased off of one of the other kids on the trip (Grant Gardner) in Australia! That  really says a lot about their program and how successful the Gardner Angus Ranch has been both in the United States and worldwide! We rounded out the trip and headed to have hot chocolate and cookies at a local coffee shop.

After visiting the ranch, we had another two hour bus ride to Lima Park. This was a Hereford and sheep operation. The managers name was Hamish McMillan and he was really funny. He singled me out and thought I was the trouble maker of the group. I have no idea why he would think such a thing! I’m a little angel! Anyways, back to the task at hand. This was a hormone free and emphasized he ran a low stress management. This was a very different operation. The calves are grass fed and handled very minimally.  They were also very large cattle averaging around 2200 pounds. To say the least they didn’t miss a meal. The sheep part of the operation was really cool to us Americans. He showed us his sheep sheering barn. That was something that none of us have seen before, and I believe we all enjoyed learning about something that we didn’t have much background on.

We also saw a lot of beautiful scenery on the way that I will upload a picture so you can share a part of Australia with me!

We are now at the hotel and headed to get some dinner. So far every meals options have been fish, chicken, or veil. I REALLY need to get a new menu quickly!  Im hoping for a big juicy steak at some point even if it is grass fed. I am ready for it! Hope that everyone’s week is going great in the USA! I miss you all.  

Day 3 in Seymour!

Well, it is yet another day in Australia. I do have to say it has been the best/ most educational day yet. This morning we went to the meat packing plant called JBS. This plant was amazing. They slaughtered both sheep and beef at this facility. They can process 5,000 sheep and 1200 beef a day! You can only imagine how quickly and how many employees it would take to run a business that can produce that much in a day. They have 600 employees currently working at the Australian JBS. It was much like an assembly line. Each person had a job that they had to do and they were extremely skilled at it. It was pretty funny how the workers reacted when they had visitors. They were excited to see us! One of the workers started talking to me and asking where I was from. I told him America. He said , “Oh America, is your name Dorothy?” haha! They also had packaging machines that were just amazingly quick. It was so cool to see how that machine knew which size of bag to use to package the meat. Something that was a lot different was the marbling in the meat. There virtually is none. They told us that the value added meat is getting really big in Australia. For those of you who don’t know what value added meat is a hormone free meat. I wish I could say more about the differences between the US and the Australian slaughtering differences, but we want to keep JBS privacy as much as possible. JBS does not normally give group tours at all. I asked the tour guide how many he did usually and he said none, so we were VERY honored to be there and would never want to cause any harm to their name.

After we were done touring JBS, we got on the bus and went to lunch at a pub. It was the best meal we have had yet. We had a choice from pork, chicken, or fish. I got the pork and it was really really good. Everyone said that their food was good at this place, so that was nice to have a good meal and get full off of it.

After lunch was done we loaded back up on the bus and headed for Webb Simmental ranch. These people were hilarious and awesome hosts. They had snacks there waiting for us and beverages ready in the fridge. They went above and beyond on hospitality and loved us Americans being there. They talked to us about how small the Simmental breed is in Australia. They are one of the very few who have picked up on the breed. A major difference that we see so far is that Australians hate black cattle. They would rather have red. That was quite the shock for me to hear. They would like the Simmental breed to grow into something special as it had in America. Webb ranch wants to have its name as the starter of the breed in Australia. His quote that I absolutely loved was “Be Bold, Be Daring, Be Different”. It was a great experience to see this farm.

We stay the night in Seymore today. This hotel is very interesting, but we only stay one night here.  There is more to come tomorrow! Hope you all are having a “Good day mate!”

Katelyn

Day 2 Lets Brew!

It is Day 2 in Melbourne! We have had quite the day today. It all started off with some seminars that talked to us about the Australian cattle identification system. The state of Victoria has an electronic ear tag system for identification. We had 3 different people talk to us about the system. This is what we did the first half of the day.

We then took the bus all over Melbourne. We stopped at the Shrine Memorial and it was just awesome. We could see the whole city of Melbourne from the top! I will upload pictures so you can see! :)

Then we went to the St. Patrics Cathedral. This church was AMAZING! Like no other church i have ever seen before. It was the most beautiful architecture! We also went to see Captain Cooks family cottage, but we had to pay to go inside so we didn't do that. We spent a short time at the botanical gardens in the conservatory as well!

The last thing we did for the day was go to the Carlton Brewery. It was there where they package 2 million liters of beer per day. It is the biggest Brewery in Australia. This experience was really really cool to see first hand. After the tour was over we got to taste 4 different kinds of beer. My favorite was the Pear Cider. It was delicious! It tasted like champaign without the bubbles! haha

After we were done eating we went to go eat. Unfortunately, I didn't eat anything because I started to feel really sick. Me and a few other people went back to the hotel early. I woke up this morning and felt a lot better. I hope that I don't get that awful stomach ache back again when I am on the trip of a lifetime! :)

Well that is all for now guys! Thanks for reading my blogs and will talk to you again tomorrow!

Katelyn

The first day in Australia!!!

Starting out on our tour of the wildlife sanctuary.

Hello to all my friends and family! I have finally made it to Australia! YEEHAW! :) It is really hard to get internet here in Australia, so please bear with me! It is actually Wednesday night here in Australia now. The small planes from KC to Dallas then Dallas to LA was a pretty easy flying. The tough ride was of course from LA to Melbourne. It was a 16 hour flight. I slept for around 8 or 9 hours of it. The food was AWFUL! We had a double decker plane. Never have I seen such a huge plane in my life! I played games and watched movies in my down time. Customs was a pretty easy process besides when Wyatt got stopped for beef jerky, but it all turned out okay. Finally we landed in Melbourne and were ready to begin our journey!

The animal hospital at the wildlife sanctuary.

When we got out of customs, our tour guide was sitting there waiting for our arrival. Our first eating stop was McDonalds! I will NEVER take advantage of McDonalds again after my previous trip to Sweden when the food was just different. I had some good hot cakes and the people so far have been really nice in Australia. The first adventure we had today was the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary. It was here where we saw our first kangaroos and koala's. I don't particularly care for zoos but this zoo was so different! My favorite part of the whole thing was the vet wildlife hospital that was incorporated. They work on wild animals brought in from the outside community for free! So not only was that cool, but there were tv's and speakers everywhere to tell what they were performing through the glass. When we were there someone had brought in a porcupine, and they were sedating it while we were there. We also got to feed the birds as they flew onto our arms. FUNNEST FACT OF THE DAY: We were in the gift shop at the wildlife center and I proceeded to see a t shirt that said CRAPMAN on it. I proceeded to ask the gift shop lady why they had this t shirt and what it stood for. He is the "superhero" for recycling toilet paper. She went on to say that he got his name from Thomas Crapper....The inventor of the TOILET! hahahaha! If that isn't funny then I don't know what is.

Downtown Melbourne at night.

Tonight we went out for what we thought was to be a nice dinner. Turns out it was a 3 course meal of which a barely nibbled on any of the 3 course parts...it was some sort of pasta, then it was potatoes and dry chicken, then ended with something that resembled ice cream. Yuck. And we had to pay for our drinks too. :( Well, that is all I have for today everyone. Look forward to talking to you all again tomorrow!

20 More Days...Am I Dreaming?!

Can it really be true??? Is this really possible....I leave for another country in 20 days and counting! It is so hard to believe that I will be traveling to Australia in such a short period of time. I remember signing up to go on the trip. It seemed like it was so long before we would be leaving and now look.....the time is drawing near! 
As the semester has unfolded, my classmates and I have done different presentations on where we will be visiting in Australia. Let me just give you a quick run down of how our trip is going to be one for the books....
We first become familiar with the geography in which we would be traveling. The most important thing I learned was how to correctly pronounce the city names, so I don't sound too much like a tourist!
The history part was knowing that this land was founded by convicts!!! Yikes! :/
The government fun fact was knowing that their is a $20 fine for not voting in Australia.
The economy fact was knowing the different things that were on the currency, so I will not get jipped when paying for my souvenirs!
The sports section was extremely interesting to me as their sports are so different. The most interesting to me was cricket!

The most important thing about the Tropical Rainforest that I learned was the humidity can get up to 90%...will I even be able to breathe?! 
The Great Barrier Reef was my presentation....the coolest known fact was that you can see the GBR from outer space! Dude thats awesome!

When learning about crops, I found the wine part caught me eye! Surprise...surprise! There is $5.5 billion wine exported, and it is produced in every state in Australia!

Talking about the slaughtering of animals was so different to me. I cannot wrap my head around visiting both JBS and Cargill and seeing such a tremendous amount of animals being processed every day. They are so efficient and its something that I look forward to seeing the most.
The livestock sales were fun to watch, as one of my classmates showed a video. It is definitely a lot different than the USA!
We rounded out the semester talking about the different breeds. So far nothing has really caught my eye that they showed to be different besides the extreme amount of associations that they provide. 
I am most looking forward to the Great Barrier Reef and seeing such a beautiful body of water. I have never been to anything that could come close to comparing to this. 
Also, I can't wait to get to know my classmates better and enjoy this, what could be, a once in a lifetime experience. 
Flight to Australia....this K State Mate is ready to board!