The Easy Care breed goes from strength to strength and we are now 53 members strong compared to 7 two years ago when we first formed the Society. A few of the members have yet to send in their £15 annual subscription - please pay up! Amongst the 20 new members this year are at least 10 new flocks and several more would have established if they had the sheep, in fact I have some firm orders for females for 2005. Many of the remainder have bought rams for crossing with all sorts of breeds. The future of the breed to a great extent lies in the results of these rams and other flocks established but I am very confident that they will come back for more as has happened in the past. The concept of not haveing to shear, very little maggoting and easy lambing with once a year gathering has certainly caught the imagination and has been described as "the greatest breakthrough in sheep breeding since the days of Robert Bakewell".

Sheep '04 at Malvern was a great success and our stand was a hive of activity with an impressive list of addresses in the mailing book and several orders taken. The ram on the stand was sold before the gates opened and at one point people were queuing up to speak to us. My thanks go to the members who turned up to give us a hand. The Builth ram sale was the only failure this year. We were the last to be sold out of 8,500 rams and we went through the ring at 5.30 p.m. when almost everyone had gone home. The few left had a real bargain and we can only hope that they will come back for more next year.

The AGM and Open Day next year, as I mentioned in the last newsletter, will be held at Sandy and Ann Welsh's farm at Biggar, Lanarkshire on Friday 10th June, 2005 so please put it in your diary. Mossfenam Farm is a 1,300 acre farm rising to 1,700 feet. There are 600 Black Face and 80 Easy Care ewes, together with 25 cows and it is quite different from the previous farms visited on Anglesey and the Isle of Wight.

For the sake of the new members and to remind existing ones, all Easy Care sheep sold must carry an official ear tag before they can be described as Easy Care and this is proof of their pedigree. These tags can be obtained from me at £1 each which is the registration fee. Whilst we do encourage you to keep a record of the sire and dam of all rams, we will accept sheep so long as they are from pedigree parents and show no signs of growing enough wool to shear and have no horns. This is to minimize unnecessary bookwork and record keeping. The sale of the tags and the very reasonable membership fees are the only income of the Society and all the money goes to promotion such as adverts in the farming press, printing and demonstrations at sheep events. None goes for administration.

Unlike other sheep breeds, showing is not allowed as we believe that breeding stock should be selected for prolificacy and other commercial attributes rather than size and condition.

Finally may I wish you all the very best for the Christmas period and I will write another newsetter in the spring with full details of the AGM and Open Day.

Iolo Owen
 
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