Black Welsh Mountain Sheep Breeders' Association

Enclosed with this newsletter are several different forms which I need you to return by Friday 8th January - but actually sooner the better.

Depending on your activity during the year, you will have received some or all of these:

Blue - your annual flock return. Please fill in the gaps or amend the information I have filled in for you already.

Please note that there are two sides to fill in. You must also send your membership subscription (£30). We do not have any Standing Orders so everyone needs to pay by cheque.

This is also your chance to buy your 100 Club stake/s for 2010 and book your adverts in the Flock Book and on our website.

The second Chris Hughes Memorial Trophy for the best Stockperson has been awarded.

The Trophy is for good stockmanship and general enthusiasm for the breed, demonstrated at any of the shows and sales throughout the year up to our own annual BWM Show & Sale in the autumn.

Any Association member can nominate a young person and the October Council meeting discuss the nominations based on the facts laid out by the nominator.

In this case it was one of our newer members, Andrew Rowe, who nominated the eventual winner, Hywel Bowden. Andrew says this of Hywel:

Inspecting the rams with Mr Spicer at Mr McNair Scott's farm

2009 saw the fourth BWM Flock Competition take place.

This year's event was staged in the South of England and the East Midlands and Eastern Counties - a large area!

Immediate Past President Patricia Laws was the judge and, escorted by husband Charlie, they covered over 750 miles in their car.

Here is what Trish had to say after completing her trip:

"It took three and a half days and I loved every minute of it - renewing old acquaintances and meeting lots of new fellow BWM flock owners.

Also one truly amazing young sheepdog who I was tempted to smuggle into our car!.

Everywhere we went the welcome and hospitality was fantastic. We started in the New Forest and ended up in Leicestershire taking in Brighton, Andover, Basingstoke, Bracknell, Sevenage, Newmarket and Halesworth.

Ian Benton and his dog

These very versatile black sheep seem to thrive whatever the terrain or regime.

My overall impression of the quality of the sheep, taking in breed points and conformation, was good.

The only negative point would perhaps be that I did see a little more grey wool and kemp than I would like in some.

The subject brought to my attention again and again was the difficulty of obtaining new rams/bloodlines in the east of England.

I came to the conclusion that if I had gone with a trailer full of shearling rams from breeders in the west I would have sold the lot!"

(Perhaps breeders in the west would like to note this and consider such a trip?? - Ed)

A new initiative from Council will be introduced in 2010 - a Ram of the Year trophy. It will take the following form.

A points card, for a specific named ram which must be a shearling or older, will be provided to members who apply to the Secretary in the New Year.

All the approved shows, listed in the table below under "Show Dates for Next Year", will qualify with the proviso that the show has selected an approved judge in 2010 (sometimes, very much against the Association's wishes shows do not choose a judge from our BWM approved judges list).

The points will be awarded as follows: 1st - 3, 2nd - 2, 3rd - 1 for all approved shows except the Royal Welsh where the points will be 1st - 5, 2nd - 4, 3rd - 3.

From next year the competition will be slightly different.

The Royal Welsh and the Smallholders Show (both at Builth Wells) will be included every year and there will be four other shows chosen from the Council's list of approved shows which may be regional shows or may be one day shows and they will change each year.

Criteria for the selection of the four ‘other' shows are (in no particular order):

• That two can be said to be north of Builth Wells
• That two can be said to be south of Builth Wells
• That, where possible, shows are chosen which have not been chosen for quite a while (for either the Hayston, or its predecessor, the Harrop)
• That dates very close to each other between the six shows are avoided if possible

Well, that's not too much of a challenge is it!

There were 13 entries in our class at the 2009 Royal Welsh Winter Fair which took place on 30th November & 1st December. The results were:

For the last 2 years the RBST have organised a native breed show at the RABDF's Dairy & Livestock Event, which is held at Stoneleigh every September.

The show has quickly turned into a great success and is now regarded as a key event in the Trust's diary.

The event is designed to promote to the industry the qualities and abilities of native and rare breeds.

Here are the dates and contacts for the approved Shows with BWM classes in 2010.

All these shows should use Association approved judges and will receive an Association rosette to award to their BWM champions.

I have not verified all the dates so do please check with the Show Secretaries listed to double check.

Your Council, smiling because it is nearly lunchtime!

The new Council met for the first time in October and came up with quite a few new ideas. Some have already been discussed within this newsletter, but here are some others:

Introductory membership scheme

How many times have you sold a ram to a non-member, wanted to encourage them to become a member but not known how to go about it?

Well, the Association are going to trial a scheme which will help.

Called an Introductory Membership, when you sell a ram to a member you can provide me (Lesley) with their name and address (and any other contact details you may have) send in £10 and I will make the person an Introductory Member for the rest of that calendar year.

For this they will receive all the mailings Full Members receive, including that year's Flock Book and hopefully, they will soon decide that their membership is valuable and when the following January arrives they will choose to become a Full Member.

The only thing an Introductory Member will not be able to do is to register rams.

If they wish to do this they will have to ‘up-grade' their membership, fill in the normal membership application form, and pay the balance of £20 (full membership is, of course, £30 a year).

So please make use of this new scheme and help build up the Association's Membership (currently running at 245 by the way).

Postal votes for council members

Your Council is very aware of the fact that relatively few people attend our AGMs, over and above the Council members who are there already.

This results in the Council being largely appointed by the Council! In an attempt to broaden the electorate your Council wish to try a postal vote scheme in 2010.

What has to be tagged?

From 31 December this year all lambs/sheep:

• If kept for breeding or if over 12 months of age must have two tags, one of which must be electronic
• Which are intended for slaughter by 12 months of age must have (at least) one tag which may or may not be electronic

The tags

The electronic tag has to be an approved official EID device. Approved official EID tags can be found on the RPA website (www.rpa.gov.uk) but as I write this there are only three approved.

These are a Shearwell tag (Tel: 01643 841611), a Quicktag (Tel: 028 20768696) and a Dalton tag (Tel: 0800 838 882).

However, more are in the approval process and are coming on stream all the time so by the time you look at the site others may well be on there.

Or just ring your usual manufacturer/supplier and ask them what they are offering as APPROVED, OFFICIAL EID tags.

The Colours

EID tags will always be yellow. Red is reserved for replacement tags for animals not on their holding of birth, including replacement EID tags.

Black can only be used for the ear tag where a ruminal bolus EID is present (including when a replacement bolus is applied).

So, yellow, red and black cannot be used as a colour for any other tags, including the conventional tag in a tag pair.

What's on them?

For breeding animals the number will appear very much like it currently does except that, for some reason, your UK 6 digit number will be preceded by a zero.

So it will have UK 0 123456 followed by the individual animal number (5 digits) e.g UK 0 123456 00001.

The same number will also be programmed into the electronic device except that ‘UK' will appear as ‘826', the internationally recognised code for the UK.

Management information may be included on the conventional tag but it must not interfere with the statutory information.

Slaughter animals need not have individual numbers and can just carry the flock number on the red, non-electronic tag or the yellow electronic tag (although if an electronic tag is used for a slaughter animal, there will be an individual number allocated to it and programmed into the tag).