The journey for a Young Enterprise group to find a really good product can be very difficult. An idea that seems totally cool can be held back by all sorts of regulations that no one ever thought of. This year has been one of those years.

The Young Enterprise team had 9 members who engaged in all activities. Early on, we had a guest speaker who talked of the possible advantages of A2 milk to dogs. Given that the team were mostly dog lovers, they investigated producing a dog treat with A2 milk. Unfortunately, there were some unforeseen obstacles to that product that we didn’t count on, so we had to look towards alternatives.

We moved on to the development of our recipe, which we ran by Columba Old Girl, Dr Helen Beattie, Chief Veterinary Officer for the New Zealand Veterinary Association. She referred us to Dr Nick Cave, a veterinarian with expertise in dietary nutrition of dogs and cats. He inspired us with his recent studies on the dangers of foreign pet food.

We soon revised the recipe for our dog treats, following the guidelines that we had been given, and were well on the way to completion when COVID struck with yet another lockdown.

Once lockdown was over and everyone was back on board, the team quickly got producing! While we had to scale back production from 500 bags to 250 bags, we still managed a return of 100% on our capital, after successfully selling all of the bags.

But our journey didn't finish there. We went on to compete in the Otago Enterprise Semi-Finals and were really pleased with our annual report.

The year has been an enjoyable and valuable learning experience for everyone in the team and our Barkin’ Good Bikkies were a success in 2021.