With the cost of ear tags continuing to rise, at the October 2024 council meeting the WLSBA council discussed ways to reduce Association costs without raising registration or membership costs.
Subsequently, it was decided that starting with lambs born in 2025, the WLSBA will only offer next sequential tags for lamb registrations, instead of replicas of existing tags. Many members already do this, however for those who tag at birth with ministry tags, you would instead use management tags.
A management tag does not have a UK/ministry number attached to it and can have any combination of letters and numbers on it that you choose- for example you could order a run of A001 through to A123. Management tags can be ordered from any tag manufacturer (Allflex, Shearwell, Roxan, etc.). Use of a management tag would mean noting down the unique management tag number against the parentage of each lamb in your own records.
Members can proceed with this in a numberof ways:
1) You may find your next sequential number (this can be found by contacting your regular tag supplier if not known) and note it down against the management tag in your lambing notes. Then, when filling in the registration form or Grassroots registrations, you can fill in your next sequential tag numbers and the Secretary will order the tags.
2) You could also fill in the registration form with the lamb details (dam, sire etc.), leaving the next sequential section blank. The Secretary will then order the tags and send you a sheet back denoting which tags have been registered to each lamb. You will still be able to order replicas of missing/lost tags. We appreciate that for some members this is a new process, so if you have any questions at all about how tag ordering/lamb registrations will work or don’t quite understand this process, please do get in touch with the Secretary.