Meals on Wheels beefed up

Meals on Wheels will be serving up some of the South West’s finest beef, after an award-winning carcass was donated to the service.

Harvey Beef last weekend donated meat from the Harvey Show Champion On the Hoof Steer to Harvey Meals on Wheels.

In a first for the show, the champion cow, entered by Benger lot-feeder Jen Roberts, was awarded champion for not only the Hoof Steer competition, but also the carcass competition, with near-perfect scores in both events.

Harvey Beef purchased the 514kg Limousin Steer for $4200, which dressed at 293.30kg with 6mm fat, and then donated most of the prime cuts to the service.

Harvey Agricultural Society beef carcass competition chief steward David Lofthouse said the donated carcass had scored the highest number of points he had seen in 40 years of stewarding beef competition events.

“Ms Roberts is known to be an extremely professional exhibitor,” he said.

“The animal scored a near-perfect 39 out of 40 points for degree of finish and 29 out of 30 points for muscle condition.

“Then for the animal to score 97 out of 100 points for the carcass competition was an outstanding result.

“And the carcass could not got to a more worthy recipient because Meals on Wheels do a great job in the community.”

Mrs Roberts said she had picked the champion cow out as a six-month-old calf.

“He was just so even body typed, well muscled and had a great temperament,” she said.

“I had prepared him for showing today from a youngster by feeding him on a mixture of nutrient-rich grass and hay, before putting him on grain for 80 days before the show.

“On the day, he stood very calmly, which was a great contributing factor towards his success.”