The National Dairy Council (NDC) has announced its winner of a special competition, ‘Deck the Herd’, to design the organisation’s 2024 Christmas card.
The annual competition was open to all school children, with a theme of ‘Christmas and dairy’. The card could have been cow or farm themed or focus on dairy products like milk and cheese.
Mia Fitzgerald, aged 10 from Ballyfin National School, Ballyfin, Co. Laois was announced as the overall winner.
Mia spent four hours designing her card using new art markers and colouring pens. She used the tagline “All I Want for Christmas is Moo!” to bring the whole card together.
Mia is a natural artist, and used the pens to do extra detail, saying that she loves to draw and paint in her spare time.
Mia and her teacher David McNabb have each won a €100 One4All voucher as well as a signed jersey by Rugby International and NDC Ambassador Garry Ringrose.
With over 350 entries, the NDC said that the competition was of a “very high standard” this year, with entries budding young artists all over the country.
The winning card design will now be promoted and featured across NDC’s social channels and in print and media. It will be sent out to thousands of people in the agri-food sector and beyond.
The NDC manages the School Milk Scheme which is funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) with the financial support of the European Union.
As part of a balanced diet, three daily servings from the ‘milk, yogurt and cheese’ food group are recommended for five to eight-year-olds, and five daily servings are recommended for nine to 18-year-olds, according to the NDC.