Sheep farmer Chris Mallaber found his trip to the NSA Central Region Winter Fair so enjoyable and informative that he decided to sign up as an NSA member on the day – and then went on a few weeks later to be the lucky winner of a NSA prize draw as the result.

NSA is giving away 12 Shearwell stick reader kits this year to individuals who join the organisation, or existing members who refer a new member to NSA. Chris is the third person to collect a prize, having qualified when he completed a membership form at the NSA Central Region Winter Fair at Bakewell Market, Derbyshire, in January.

Chris says: “The NSA tries to support the sheep industry in many ways – working on important issues on behalf of farmers, keeping members well informed, organising events and bringing all aspects together in an understandable way – so I thought I would be beneficial to become a member and support what they do. To win such a useful piece of equipment as a result will be a great help to my business. One of the mains reason for visiting the event at Bakewell was to get a clearer understanding of the electronic tagging systems, what was required and what they could do. Having never used an EID system before, Shearwell’s appealed to me because the reader itself seemed hard wearing and simple to use, and the other options that can be added seemed easily compatible and covered all requirements. With my increase in flock size, being spilt up and spread over a fairly large area, fulfilling movement requirements will now be simpler and more manageable, enabling records to be kept up to date more easily.”

The Mallaber family is based at Drakelow, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, where the main farming enterprise is a partnership between Chris’s dad and his three brothers with dairy, beef and arable interests taking in 1,000 acres over three farms. The sheep flock is owned and managed separately by Chris, utilising some of the family-owned land and, as numbers grow, further rented land as well. There are currently 50 pedigree Texels under the Grovewood prefix, bred to produce shearling rams, plus 100 Scottish Blackfaces crossed to the Bluefaced Leicester to produce Scotch Mule ewe lambs, and another 200 home-bred Mules, Mashams and Texel and Suffolk crosses, put to the Texel for prime lamb production.

Chris got into sheep back in 2001, when foot-and-mouth movement restrictions meant a neighbour’s sheep that were over-wintering on the family farm were stranded and ended up being lambed in a polytunnel. Chris explains: “I used to go up before and after school to help John look after his sheep and, as a thank you when the lambing had finished and restrictions were lifted so the sheep could be moved, he gave me five cade lambs. This was the start of my flock and I’ve never looked back.”

NSA is giving away a total of 12 readers between 1st December 2014 and 30th November 2015. Full terms and conditions and membership application forms at