With the sale season coming up fast, this is always a busy time for us here at the Society and the last seven days have certainly lived up to that idea. Here is your weekly round-up to make sure you haven’t missed anything, including what to expect next week!

Meet the team:

We posted a brilliantly interesting piece where we got to learn a bit more about Helena Stewart, Assistant Breed Development Manager at Pedigree Cattle Services. Helena gave us some great insight into her background, interests and her passion for clay pigeon shooting, including the great successes she’s had thus far! If you missed it, you can have a read at: http://www.aberdeen-angus.co.uk/news/meet-the-team-helena-stewart-pedigree-cattle-services/

Herd competitions:

This week, we brought you the results from a couple of the herd competitions that have taken place, namely the Munster and Northern Ireland herd competitions. At Munster, judge Louis Byrne made the point about how impressed he was with the overall quality of stock present in the province, a great compliment to all involved. Amongst the winners was the Mogeely Herd of Albert and Jennifer De Cogan who took the top prize for best large herd. You can view the full set of results from Munster at: http://www.aberdeen-angus.co.uk/news/munster-aberdeen-angus-herds-competition-results/

The Northern Ireland Aberdeen-Angus Club also announced their herd competition winners this week in the event that was sponsored by Danske Bank. This year’s competition was judged by Scotsman Ian Anderson who made a point of commending the breeders on their achievements, saying that it was a pleasure to see so many excellent herds and individual animals. Taking the top spot for best large herd was Robin Lamb of the Richhill Herd, and you can see the full results at: http://www.aberdeen-angus.co.uk/news/aberdeen-angus-herds-collect-awards/

YDP final weekend:

Next weekend will see the much-anticipated final weekend for this year’s Youth Development Programme participants. It’s been a great year of competitions and workshops, with participants of all age groups showing some great enthusiasm, work ethic and skills along the way. The culmination of all their hard work will be the identification of the overall winner who will receive a magnificent study trip overseas to the destination of their choice.

We shared the first of our judge profiles with you this week, which you can view at: http://www.aberdeen-angus.co.uk/news/ydp-final-judge-profiles/. We look forward to bringing you the remaining judge profiles next week prior to the final! We’d like to take the opportunity to wish all the finalists the best of luck next weekend. It’s been a pleasure to see our young people display such passion for this industry and we firmly believe we’re in great hands moving forward. We must also thank all of those who’ve hosted the various workshops throughout the country this year, the trainers who’ve made the workshops possible, and the programme co-ordinator Gayle Bersey who pulls everything together and acts as a magnificent mentor for the youngsters. We can’t wait to bring you coverage from the final weekend in the coming weeks!

World Angus Forum:

We were delighted to receive a lovely message from Lois McRae of Canada this week! Lois said: ‘’Special thanks to all the organizers, committee, and farms we toured in England and Scotland. You hosted a WORLD CLASS EVENT and we are very pleased to have met so many great Angus breeders from around the world. The Angus breed is not only known for its top notch cattle but the Angus friendships made at these events. Thanks again for the hospitality. Blair and Lois McRae, Mar Mac Farms, Canada.’’

A big thank you is extended to Lois and family, along with all of our other friends old and new from around the world who helped make the Forum such a success.

A message of support to our friends in Western Canada and the USA:

As a Society, we’d like to extend our whole-hearted support to all our friends over in the USA and Western Canada who are suffering such devastation and difficulty as a result of the wildfires that have been taking place there recently. In a time where we are trying to complete harvest in rainy conditions, we must remember our friends who are in a much worse situation than us. You are in our thoughts and prayers, and we extend our support to you all in coming through this difficult period. Our thoughts also go out to those being affected by the conditions in the Florida area which has seen such devastation recently – we send you our support at a very difficult period.

Other news:

At the end of August we had our latest Council meeting. The meeting was a great success with lots of positive discussions surrounding how to move our breed forward in the imminent future. Our marketing partners at Denvir Marketing were also present at the meeting and we were able to discuss lots of potential plans to be put in place. We look forward to making these plans more concrete and letting you see them unfold in the coming weeks and months.

We’d like to encourage anybody who has upcoming calf shows to get in touch with the Society, or directly with Denvir via [email protected] or [email protected] if they’d like us to cover the show in some way. In the coming week, we will be doing a nice piece of this nature with Carol Rettie and we’d like to encourage any others to get involved too!

We’ve got our recruitment ads out as we seek to fill the position of Chief Executive here at the Society. This week, the ads can be seen in Farmers Weekly and the Irish Farmers Journal. We’d like to thank our members for their assistance in shaping the job specification thanks to our recent member survey, and we look forward to sharing any news on this as and when we have it.

Finally, Society Patron Prince Charles was present at the Westmorland Show which took place this week, which we look forward to bringing you a full report on including results next week!

From all at the Society, have a lovely weekend.