Take the future of the industry into your hands

Less than four weeks to go until the Sheep Breeders Round Table event, where attendees will find out the latest from industry projects and have the opportunity to discuss the impacts of Brexit.

With a theme this year of ‘becoming the best sheep industry in the world’ the three-day event, 15 to 17 November, brings together all of those with an interest in sheep production, attracting a varied audience of industry experts from farmers and breeders to researchers and vets.

The event, organised by cross-industry organisations, will have a new Friday morning session this year, sponsored by iSAGE (Innovation for Sustainable Sheep and Goat Production in Europe). Georgios Banos, professor from SRUC, will introduce the EU funded project, iSAGE followed by a series of speakers concentrating on developing resilience in the UK sheep industry.

Over the weekend there will be updates from levy boards on major projects including RamCompare and the Welsh Hill Ram Scheme. The international session welcomes guest speaker Reinard Everts, vet and managing director of NSFO (Dutch Sheep and Goat Breeders Organisation), to share insight on sheep breeding in the Netherlands, including what they select for and how phenotypes are recorded.

Keynote speaker Nic Friggens, from INRA, will explore precision agriculture and the genomic revolution. Other topics include Tim Dunn, Chairman of the North Yorkshire Moors Swaledale project, who will be speaking about the results of their three year project focusing on improving productivity from the hills, following their extremely successful open day at the beginning of the month.

Delegates will also have the opportunity to choose from a selection of workshops, new for 2019, on topics such as iceberg diseases, laryngeal chondritis (Texel throat), antibiotic use, new online tools from Signet and social media for marketing stock. In addition, EasyRams, Wairere, Meatlinc, Exlana, Maternal Sheep Group and Innovis will discuss the vision, mission, successes, failures and marketing of their sheep breeding businesses in an open and honest discussion on Sunday.

The Sheep Breeders Round Table event will be held on Friday 15th to Sunday 17th November, at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Herald Way, Pegasus Business Park, East Midlands Airport, Castle Donington, Derby, DE74 2TZ.

For more information visit https://www.nationalsheep.org.uk/sbrt/ and to book your tickets and accommodation head to https://events.ahdb.org.uk/event/sheep-breeders-round-table-2019/  Bookings close on 4 November.