Practical skills, backed by a tertiary education, were vital for young people wishing to make a career in the agricultural sector, according to a young western Victorian livestock manager.
Oli Vidor, 26, said he hoped to graduate from Geelong’s Marcus Oldham College at the end of this year, with a full bachelor’s degree in business and farm management.
He was being assisted in his studies with a scholarship from his current employer, Ingelby Farming, the international company which owns Derrinallum’s Mount Elephant Station and several Tasmanian properties.
“If I wanted to really progress in the ag industry and work up to higher roles I really needed a tertiary education,” Mr Vidor said.
The Marcus Oldham studies followed an associate diploma in Queensland.
“I then spent another two years in the industry itself, before deciding I wanted some more tertiary education, so that’s how Marcus Oldham came about.”
He said his latest studies offered applied learning, in a well rounded setting.
“Unlike a pure ag science degree, it was still quite applied learning,” Mr Vidor said.
“You would learn the theory behind everything but you do it in a manner in which means you can go out and apply it straight away.”
His employer’s parent company, Ingleby Farms and Forests, owns six Tasmanian properties, while at Derrinallum has 2,944 hectares are under crops, with 1,286 hectares of pasture.
Mr Vidor said his studies had held him in good stead for his role as livestock mnager at Mount Elephant.
“I think one of the most valuable things I learned was about pasture and grazing management, and that’s something I apply every day of the week,” Mr Vidor said.
“As I have come to learn, managing the number of ewes here I do is a fine balance, it’s not as simple as just turfing stock out into the paddock and watching them eat grass.”
Mount Elephant was a volume buyer of Athlone Poll Dorsets, at this year’s sale, with the rams set to go over mixed age composites, to produce prime lambs.
“We get all our replacement stock from Tasmania, from some of the other farms, the company owns,” he said.
The Derrinallum area presented a number of challenges, with Mount Elephant originally being a wool producing property.
“It gets quite wet over winter and you are carrying a lot of subsoil moisture through, then the temperature starts to ramp up and all of a sudden, bang, you have a huge spring flush and you need to utilise that feed.”
Mr Vidor said while he enjoyed the cropping aspect of farming, he had grown into the position as livestock manager.
“It’s become my obsession, when you are dealing with sheep, day in, day out, it’s almost they have become my sheep flock,” he said.
“I guess it gets to the point where it really doesn’t feel like work.”
