Meet the team: Development Officer Melanie Dowling
Each edition, we will introduce you to a different member of our SIBI team.
Melanie grew up on a mixed farm located west of Katanning, always fostering a passion for animals and participating in any sheep work around the farm. She was also heavily involved in equestrian activities from mustering sheep through to competing around the state in eventing.
“I headed to boarding school in Perth and at the end of year 12 it was very evident to me that I wanted to return to a regional area” Melanie explained.
Melanie enrolled in Agricultural Science at the University of Western Australia (1999–2002). Throughout her studies, her passion for sheep grew and she started to narrow her field into anything sheep related; nutrition, genetics and wool production. In her 4th year honours project she worked closely with Dr Tony Schlick, CSIRO, looking into breeding sheep with less dust in wool. This sparked a passion for research and at the completion of her degree she started work at the Department of Agriculture in Katanning as a research officer.
From 2003 till 2008 Melanie was involved with wool research on the Katanning resource flock including felting properties, dust/suint/wax relationships, and breeding for fabric comfort properties. She also worked on the wool supply chain and used some of our unique WA characteristics to create new markets for WA wool.
Melanie left DAFWA in 2008 to start a family and now has three children: Kimberley aged 9, Kasey aged 7 and Lane aged 6. Throughout these years of raising her young children, she supported her husband in running an electrical retail, Telstra dealership and IT business.
“Throughout the 10 years of running our business we saw the best and worst of the industry. We learned to cope through some very hard financial years which has given me an appreciation for producers in a dry year like the one we are currently having. Our business taught me staff management skills, team building skills, customer service skills, financial planning and a general appreciation of the blood, sweat and tears that go into running a small business. These life lessons will never be forgotten.”
Melanie recently returned to the department as a sheep development officer in Katanning, to further her love for agriculture.
“Armed with some more mature life skills, my place in the Increasing Business and Technical Skills sub project of SIBI is a good fit for me. My main role is to increase the adoption of genetic technologies, particularly ASBVs, to increase the rate of genetic gain in our state flock, assisting our efforts to double the value of the sheep industry by 2025.”
Melanie helps co-ordinate workshops to help producers define breeding objectives and understand how to use ASBVs effectively, and is available to run RamPower analyses for producers interested in benchmarking certain flocks and is also able to assist producers with uploading data into Sheep Genetics.
To contact Melanie, email melanie.dowling@agric.wa.gov.au.