Not so bad…..
There was a good turnout for the tb awareness meeting at Exeter and I was rather anxious about it but as it turned out there wasn’t really much new information to be had and it was not all doom and gloom. I feel that we down here in Cornwall are pretty well informed about the situation as it has been in our press for quite a long time now. It was all pretty much a repeat of the VLA talk in Truro last year, even with the same slides. The one slide I hadn’t seen was of a badger with the disease, pretty gruesome and he was still alive!! It’s this ability to survive the disease that makes them such “super secretors”.
Anyway the message was pretty positive, Gina agrees that the industry can continue in the same manner ie mobile or drive-by matings and shows must continue but with the exception of a serious improvement to our bio-security. That was where most of the talk concentrated on and there were some very useful pieces of advice to be had.
There was Teresa from Rosecraddoc Alpacas and Dawn from Golding Alpacas in the car with us. This mean’t for a very chatty trip up so fortunately I remembered my earplugs!! We dropped our fleeces and photo entries of at Classical Alpacas before going to the talk. Chas had to phone Rachel to tell her we were there, she was busy hunting for rabbits!!!! I did spot a fat looking pheasant hanging from the beams so there is obviously more to Rachel than just being an alpaca breeder, magazine editor, industry leader in the alpaca textile world, Futurity organiser etc etc….