Just a quick thank you to everyone who attended the WSAG AGM and meal today, it was great to see you all!
A great turn out, good company and good food – watch this space for news of our future events.
WSAG AGM Sunday 7th April
WSAG AGM Sunday 7th April
Arrive from 12:00pm
Lunch at 12:30, AGM during the afternoon!
The Manor At Abberley, Abberley,, Worcestershire WR6 6BN
An informal AGM session combined with Sunday Lunch (our rather late Christmas social…) and a chance to catch up with your fellow members.
Please let us know if you can join us – it would be really great to see you!
WSAG Committee
WSAG AGM Saturday 26th February 2022
Arrive from 12.00pm
Lunch at 12.30, AGM 1.15pm, Speaker 2.00pm
Abberley Village Hall, WR6 6AZ
This is a ‘bring and share’ lunch so we invite you to bring your favourite goodies for everyone to try.
Obviously, the West Shires Alpaca Group AGM is the most exciting thing in your social calendars, and you’re all finding it hard to contain your enthusiasm….. but this is a meeting we do need to hold each year and we have arranged an excellent speaker, Jonathan Guy from JG Animal Health. It’s also a good opportunity to reconnect with old friends and talk ‘alpaca’ with like minded people and generally catch up!
Please let us know if you are able to come – it would be really great to see you there
WSAG Committee
Royal Three Counties Fleece Show
Results are now on the BAS website!
Congratulations to all!
Royal Three Countries Fleece Show
Latest Update 3rd July: Entries now closed – thank you very much for the flurry of entries, we are now full! Good luck to everyone that entered.
Royal Three Counties Fleece Show, organised by the West Shires Alpaca Group. It’s a great way to have your fleeces evaluated – all entries receive a detailed scorecard showing how the points were awarded – and Champion and Reserve also gain entry to the National Fleece Show.
Mary-Jo Smith will be judging the fleeces on 24th and 25th July.
The last day for entries is 7th July and fleeces are to be delivered by 16th July.
Please see the BAS website to enter via the Pedigree Registry: ‘Manage your Herd’.
*ONWARD SHIPPING TO OTHER SHOWS*. To make things easier, if you would like us to forward your fleece to the East of England Fleece show – just let us know and we will arrange this for you.
Why not give it a go!!
AGM
This year’s AGM will be held on Sunday 28th February at 11.00 am.
It won’t come as a surprise to you that this will be held via Zoom, and it’s such a shame we won’t be able to have lunch together and our usual alpaca catch up but there is no other way this year.
The AGM is an important meeting for the group, where members get the chance to openly discuss how the group operates and provide ideas for events or activities…COVID permitting…elect committee members and see how the group funds have been spent across the year.
Hope to see as many of you as possible!
Royal Three Counties Fleece Show
West Shires Alpaca Group would like to thank all the entrants to the Royal Three Counties Fleece Show which was judged at the weekend – this year we had a fantastic entry.
A huge thanks goes to Roger Clarke for his meticulous and professional approach to working his way through over 150 fleeces, taking time also to educate the fleece stewards along the way, making the long days both fun and educational.
Thanks to our ‘crack’ team of fleece stewards who worked hard to make sure everything ran so smoothly – no mean feat!
Our sincere thanks must go to Julia and Adam Berry for hosting the show (allowing fleece to take over their house!), and for feeding judges and stewards so well – an army marches on its stomach so they say!
In summary, a great show that ran well – we really hope to see your entries again next year!!
Results will be released very shortly.
Royal Three Counties Fleece Show
Just a quick note to say thank you for all the entries for West Shires Alpaca Group fleece show. We’ve got just over 150 entries – we’re going to make Roger Clarke sweat whilst working his way through them!
We’ll keep you posted with the results – good luck everybody and thanks once again!
The Art and Science of Breeding
We had a very informative and interesting Saturday afternoon talking about how to decide on which stud male to use for your dams. Jay covered some of the theory, talking about the various parameters that you need to consider such as your aims for breeding, fibre quality of the stud and dam, colour, the qualities the stud gives to his offspring, the pedigree and colour ancestry of the stud and dam, conformation of the stud and dam, etc. There is a lot to consider and a good breeder can help with their detailed knowledge of their studs and the attributes they can influence over your dam and hopefully improve in the cria.
Roger then introduced some of his studs and talked about their fleece qualities. We moved on to look at some groups of very cute cria sired by the studs we had already seen. Knowing the dams the cria were from, Roger explained how some of the studs didn’t massively improve on fleece stats for dams that didn’t have particularly good fleece themselves but were able to sire very good cria from good dams – often given the term ‘polishers’. Other studs were able to improve fleece quality for most of their offspring compared to their dams – known as ‘improvers’.
Thank you to Roger for hosting the event and to Roger and Jay for sharing their knowledge and experience.
Annual General Meeting
We had another great attendance at the West Shires Alpaca Group Annual General Meeting.
We began the meeting with a fantastic buffet lunch followed by the formalities of the day, which were then closely followed by a very interesting and informative talk on seed mixes and pasture management from Sam Lane of Cotswold Seeds.
We really hope everyone found the day both useful and enjoyable and it was good to meet a few new faces and catch up with old friends!
We’re putting together the 2020 calendar of events, so if there is anything you are particularly interested in that’s not on the list, just let us know and we’ll see what we can do! 🦙
