2018 Dairy Research Foundation Symposium

The 2018 Symposium was held at Camden NSW this year on 16 – 17 July. It was a huge success with attendance rate exceeding expectation. The Tuesday session saw 185 delegates pack our Conference Centre and on Wednesday 131 delegates attended the farm day.

The Symposium welcomed once more the collaboration of NSW Farmers, Dairy Connect and Dairy NSW.  We also saw a brilliant line up of leading speakers, headed by Dr Robert James, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech and President of Down Home Heifer Solutions.

Farm Day took us to Leppington Pastoral Company – a family owned and operated dairy farm in Bringelly. Attendees were thoroughly impressed by this modern dairy facility milking 2000 cows, one of the largest in Australia.

The real focus of the farm day was the presentations given by our young and talented Emerging Scientists in the form of a competition. The intent behind this encounter was to offer our young scientists an opportunity for professional development and to introduce them to and assimilate them with our industry. The sessions were very well attended and the audience had the pleasure to cast their votes for the Best Presentation.

A student from Curtin University,  Jully Gogoi Tiwari, won the title of Best Presentation for her research on an effective vaccine against Staphylococcus aureus mastitis.

Runner up for Best Presentation was John Gardenier from The University of Sydney, for his research on object detection for cattle gait tracking.

Best Paper was awarded to Patricia Colusso, also from The University of Sydney, for her research on the effect of group size on dairy cow response to a virtual fence.

Congratulations to all our winners, well done!

The Dairy Science Award was presented to Bill Inglis at the DRF Symposium dinner. Bill recently stepped down from the presidentship of the Foundation after 10 successful years in the chair. He considered it a privilege to have had the opportunity to preside over this successful foundation. He however believed that it was time to hand over the rein to someone with a fresh approach to the challenges facing DRF and the Dairy industry in general.

The Dairy Research Foundation welcomed dairy farmers Mr Michael Perich as President and Mr Gavin Moore as Vice-President of the DRF since May 2018.