Melbourne Royal: Dream becomes reality for young cattle star

As a young cattle enthusiast at Scone NSW, Tayla Miller dreamt of owning a Valley Creek Simmental. Today, she took that dream to a whole new level.

Tayla Harris with Ellie, the Supreme Champion of the Simmental-Fleckvieh category. Picture: Conor Fowler

As a young cattle enthusiast at Scone in New South Wales, Tayla Miller used to dream of owning a Valley Creek Simmental.

Not only has that dream come true, but on Thursday Tayla won the Supreme Champion Simmental/Fleckvieh category at the Melbourne Royal Show in partnership with VC Simmentals.

13-month heifer VC Strike U042 or “Ellie”, won on debut at Melbourne after travelling almost 1300km to show, and for Tayla it was a very special win.

“I had a dream as a young kid of owning a VC Simmental. At Royal shows I’d see (them), and would strive to be able to own one,” she said.

“We were lucky enough to purchase two a few years back and have great success with them as well. Ellie has been on board since about March, and we’re ticking off the goals.”

Tayla Harris and Samantha Moeck with the winning ribbon and trophy. Picture: Conor Fowler

Samantha Moeck runs VC Simmentals at Binda in New South Wales with partner Stuart, and said the award was credit to Tayla, the heifer and the rest of the team.

“We had a goal to come here and try and win the blue ribbon, which we did, and won junior champion and grand champion female, and the supreme is just the icing on the cake,” Samantha said.

“The biggest thing for us when we did the partnership with Tayla, (was that) we wanted someone who was young and enthusiastic.

“For us to sell a heifer to someone else and then achieve a win (like this), that’s our goal. We’re making someone else’s dream come true, and for us, it’s a massive thrill.”

Samantha said that for a heifer of Ellie’s calibre to be so young and be “such a freak” at that age is pretty exciting.

“Genetics is key, but what we want is just nice, good clean females who are going to breed on to be breeders. She’s long, she’s feminine, she’s very pretty and very showy,” she said.