Presidents message
Hello to you all, no doubt many of you will have your sights set on a bit of warm spring weather as calves begin to appear. All the best for the coming spring.
Recently the BOM met in Feilding. The first such meeting for several years, so for some of us it was the first visit to PBB. It was an excellent opportunity to meet many new staff, including manager Jamie Tait, who I believe will lead PBB back towards its origins. A reversal of the recent separation trends which included a distinct cooling of ABRI relations will be very welcome.
We discussed at length our fee structure and unfortunately the news is not great. The current financial year is going to post a significant loss. PBB on the back of their own financial woes increased their hourly charge rates from $42/hr to $75/hr. This has left the board with no option but to increase our dam fees from $37 to $45 (3rs and over) and $20 to $25 (2yr olds). Transfer fees for sires will increase to $200 and Associate member subscription will increase to $150.
These fees have also been linked to an annual CPI increase which will prevent the future need for large one-off increases. It must also be noted that recent significant fee increases have come after a long period of no increases, despite costs continuing to move upward.
During our meeting we talked via zoom with Nicky Turner, Christan Duff and Brad Crook (ABRI). They have agreed to help in our quest to investigate the possibility of including the UK and North American data bases in a combined analysis. We also discussed the possibility of developing a maternal and a terminal index within our current analysis. They are going to report back to us on both points.
As always, we welcome your feed back
Peter Foss.
