My name is Christopher Duke and I come from Brisbane. From a young age, my exposure to various agricultural disciplines through family helped to foster my passion for plant and animal production. This passion drove me to involve myself in farming throughout my time at school, a gap year upon leaving school and indeed in subsequent years.
I have found that I am very interested in animal health, especially ruminant nutrition, reproduction and infectious disease management. These are three interrelated areas that are absolutely essential to the viability of every dairying and beef production enterprise and innovation and development in these areas will continue to drive progression in these industries and will help to underpin their success into the future. Upon finishing my degree, I look forward to approaching these areas from a scientific perspective and looking at ways to refine practices on both an individual farm and a whole industry level.
I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been awarded the Horizon Scholarship. The opportunities to meet both current and future agricultural professionals, as well as being able to undertake industry placements on leading farms with highly successful management practices are things that I believe will help to prepare me for a successful career in the industry.
Through Dairy Australia, I am looking forward to the unique opportunity I will have to look at how leading dairying operations establish and achieve their very high production goals, and seeing things that these individual farms analyse and act upon in order to improve their year-on-year performance.