Page 12 - Yearbook 2019

CEO report

Moving forward in 2019

Robin McIlrath, chief executive and breed secretary

018 has been an eventful year, from the ‘Beast from the I was delighted that Andrea Gardiner agreed to be the Society
East’ creating havoc in February and March to extended Youth Officer and she is featured in this book. Last year we
2‘drought’ conditions in the summer – you can also throw introduced a new fee structure to encourage younger folks to start
in the odd storm that closed things down for a few days! their own flocks. We now have 109 flocks registered to young
As the year progressed, the cloud that is Brexit was looming large breeders. Some of these are the children of existing members, but
on our horizon. It is now at our doorstep and at the time of writing many are new breeders. The National Youth Championships have
this report, there still seems to be no understanding of how things been held in Carlisle since their inception in 2017. To ensure that
will turn out. I have, however, been impressed by the ability of our the youth from throughout the Society are encouraged, the 2019
breeders to cope with whatever is thrown at them and to continue Championships will be in Shrewsbury Mart on 26th October.
to deliver excellent stock whether bred for the sale or show ring. The Commercial Committee continues to move forward with
I am convinced that we as a Society and as individuals will work a number of promotional activities for the new season planned.
together to ensure the breed continues to be a major player in the Scott Brown has stepped down as chair. A big thanks to Scott for
industry whether GB, Northern Ireland, Eire or indeed with our ever getting the committee off the ground. I am looking forward to
increasing number of breeders and customers on mainland Europe. working with Andrew Reed over the years as the Society brings a
I looked on 2018 as the opportunity to consolidate and build on greater focus to our interaction with the commercial world.
a number of initiatives from previous years. Following on from the I would like to thank and acknowledge the ongoing support
outstanding success of our social media Facebook live broadcasts of our Corporate Sponsor, Norbrook, for supporting the National
from the Stirling and Shrewsbury sales, we increased our coverage Sale and the National Youth Championships. Finally, may all our
to include Ballymena in Northern Ireland and Roscrea in the members, associates and supporters have a successful 2019.
South of Ireland. Kelso Ram Sale covered both rings in 2018. The
response to this initiative has been excellent and we will continue
to develop this in 2019.
Collecting Genomic data as part of the ram registration process
was introduced in 2018. This serves two key purposes protecting
the integrity of the breed and protecting breeders and customers
through parentage testing and identifying the scrapie diplotype
(ones, twos or fives). This Autumn this will be expanded to identify
the propensity for MV in sheep. The second purpose of this is to
create and build a genetic database to facilitate future research
and studies. It will take the Society a number of years to collect a
critical mass of data to carry out any meaningful studies.
In February, we successfully transferred our database
management operations from Basco to Grassroots. Professionally
I have been involved in a number of migrations over the years
and this particular migration was as smooth as any and I am
getting a lot of positive feedback from members. An exciting new
development with Grassroots is a new website that will be mobile
friendly. This means better access to information from your mobile
phone or tablet! Your one stop shop for all
In May the Society commissioned a clinical tasting analysis on
lamb sired by Suffolks, Charollais and Texel rams. You can find a
more detailed presentation of the results in this Year Book, but agricultural sales
the headline finding is that 70% of participants in the research
selected the Suffolk sired lamb as their number one choice!
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12 Suffolk Sheep Society Yearbook 2019