PRESS RELEASE
Hobby Pig Keeping Course - Massive Success
An amazing 50 people attended the course on Hobby Pig Keeping at Stisted Village Hall that was funded by DEFRA and presented excellently by Odelle Walker from ADAS and Bev Mair from Chelmsford Trading Standards.
Odelle covered the following:
- 5 freedoms associated with the Animal Welfare Act 2006
- Bio Security, Disease Control - Including Notifiable Diseases, and effective quarantine.
- Pig Health, Vaccinations and worming and fallen stock. (You can't just bury dead pigs, they legally have to be disposed of in the correct manner, which in Essex is via W Martin and Son in Braintree.)
- Feeding and legislation - it is illegal to feed any catering waste including domestic kitchen waste even if these establishments only cater for vegetarians.
- Record Keeping Requirements - how we must keep movement logs (even the infamous micro pigs need a walking licence) and medicine books and the length of time they must be kept.
Bev Mair, from Chelmsford Trading Standards, then moved on to talk about
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| Odelle Walker in full flow |
movements of pigs including the new EAML2 Online movement recorded system, which will completely replace the paper forms from the 1st April 2012. Identification of Pigs - Tags, Slapmarks or Tattoo's and the associated legislation was also covered.
The course ran from 2pm-5pm, breaking half way through for refreshments supplied by East Essex Smallholders Group with a marvellous selection of homemade cakes.
People attended from all across Essex, along with members from East Essex Smallholders Group, Herts &Essex Smallholders and Suffolk Smallholders.
The course was very informative and everyone who attended commented on how much they had learnt.
Fingers crossed DEFRA funding can be obtained for a similar course to be run on sheep.
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