[CarolineR]

Hi Everyone,    Just to let any interested people know, there is a free sheep course run by SAC on Tuesday 31 July 2012 at 10.30am. Entitled "Profit from Sheep" and held at Meikle Haddo, Newburgh, Ellon, AB41 6AN, the event will be signposted off A90 Aberdeen to Ellon road at B9000 junction to Newburgh.    It is being held by kind permission of the Marshall family at Meikle Haddo. The announcement can be viewed on the SAC website at http://www.sac.ac.uk/news/forthcomingevents/120731sheeprofit   Topics covered during the day will include:
 

• Sheep Health
• Nutrition 
• Grassland/Forage crops
  
• Tagging and recording
  
• The Outlook for Sheep and the euro issue
  
• Lamb Cutting Demo
   
  This course is kindly supported by: Harbro, Towns & Carnie, Denis Brinicombe, QMS, ANM Group.
  SAC acknowledges support from the Scottish Funding Council and Scottish Government for its programmes of knowledge transfer and exchange.
     
  A free event, food is provided.

To book your place phone SAC Turriff on 01888 563333.  Contact Farm & Rural Business Services - Turriff
SAC (Scottish Agricultural College) Work Clifton Road, Turriff,
Aberdeenshire
AB53 4DY
TelWork 01888 563333
Fax 01888 563757
 
 

• Please note, this is not one of the free events which are being planned as part of SAC's Scottish Government funded courses aimed specifically at smallholders. The majority of the course is likely to be of use to both larger scale farmers and smaller scale units like smallholders as it deals primarily in the general keeping of healthy sheep, please be aware that there may be some discussion involving exports and the sheep industry in general. If you are anything like me and read the Scottish Farmer or other farming newspapers regularly, you might well find the industry stuff very interesting anyway, in addition to all the useful knowledge on health, forage and tagging, etc!

[lachlanandmarcus]

ooh thankyou for this! I have booked myself on it    it sounds very interesting and hopefully will learn a lot of useful info.
 

[Brucklay]

Booked too - any chance to learn something is great 

[CarolineR]

Hey, that's great! I am glad there is interest in the farming event. I will be there too. My very nice boss is sending me - it will be pretty helpful in giving me a good idea of what organization needs involved in running courses. I am and always have been primarily animal orientated, so power-point, generators and catering facilities are rather outwith my area of expertise!
 
See you there, folks - as it is a farming event I might be fairly easily visible, the last few I have been at have not had so many thirty-year-old women at them, unfortunately. My name is Caroline, feel free to come and say hi.

[Anke]

Shame too far oop north for us from the Borders... but maybe something similar would be organised in/near Edinburgh?

[CarolineR]

Certainly working on that! Probably if we do something further south it will be a similar thing,except with the emphasis on smallholders rather than the larger industry farmers. Lots of things are the same, of course, but limited grazing etc can pop up a few problems that it sometimes needs a bit of ingenuity to get round.
 
We are really hoping to have more course details by the time of the Smallholder's and Grower's Festival, like a handout on dates and topics or even a free email update service, so we can tell everybody directly whenever a useful course is available. At the moment, it's just me, trying to get different offices and branches to tell me when something is on, then hopefully posting it on TAS! Thank goodness for TAS!!

[Mays]

excellent day, very imformative, jsut a pity I had to leave before the stock tour, nice to see my fellow sheep/goaty chums 

[Big Light]

Was very informative for all levels, over a wide area of subjects. Hog roast and lovely scones were a bonus 2

[CarolineR]

It was a really good day, I enjoyed myself! Not a cloud in the sky and blazing sunshine.
 
Don't think the "pilot project" smallholder budget is going to stretch to hog roasts and fist-sized scones and jam for any of my little short courses though.....gutted!
And I've given myself my first truly visible farmer's "t-shirt tan" of the year.....the week before my wedding. Typical. You knon it's been appalling weather when a pasty scottish girl can't muster a decent sunburn until August at the earliest.
 
Brilliant turnout too, with a good mixture of people.
Hope you all tried the "guess the disease" competition! I thought that was a good board to show people common things you can see in sheep. And no, that wasn't me who was the SAC vet who entered the competition - that was my colleague, for a joke! Lucky she got them all right eh?