Keira McDonald has big dreams for her future in the beef cattle industry – and Te Mania Angus is proud to be helping her achieve this dream.
The 20-year-old Clarendon College graduate is the 2024 recipient of the $20,000 Te Mania Angus Marcus Oldham scholarship and starts her Bachelor of Agricultural Business there next year.
But for now, the girl with no farming background is getting some serious hands-on experience working across three properties around Boorowa with an intensive beef feedlot and export enterprise after working at an Ararat sheep/cropping farm for her gap year, straight out of school.
“I could see the potential in agriculture as a career and I have a serious interest in the data side of the industry, collating it, analysing it and using it to fast-track progress and potential,” Keira says.
“Being so fortunate to have received this amazing Te Mania Angus scholarship has certainly made my life a lot easier. Much of the study I have been doing so far has focused on admin and the bookwork side which has made me a lot more comfortable with Excel and spreadsheets,” she added.
“I know there is a lot of opportunity in the wider industry of ag, and after my time on the farm in Ararat and now here in Boorowa, the cogs in my mind are starting to turn and understand what agriculture has to offer me – and what I might be able to help do for it.”
Having grown up in Lorne, the closest Keira has come to living livestock has been the racehorses being run on acreage owned by her father at Hall’s Creek, and yet she is now planning to swap that idyllic existence for serious study, data subsets and unlocking hidden on-farm secrets through analysis.
