DIARY DATES
DIARY DATES
– 23 SEPTEMBER 2021 at 7PM
Webinar with Andy Dell and Debbie Davy talking about how we can use science to support the Exmoor pony.
– 30 SEPTEMBER 2021 at 7PM
Webinar with Jill Graham talking about the Exmoor pony
Our first speaker …
Dr Andy Dell is a retired Teacher from Kendal in Cumbria where he lives on a smallholding with his partner Jill.
He has been involved with horses since his teenage years growing up in Devon and with Cleveland Bay Horses in Cumbria for the past 30 years.
He is a Trustee and Member of The Breed Committee of the Cleveland Bay Horse Society and in the early “Noughties” was instrumental in putting together a breed management strategy, now known as SPARKS, to control inbreeding in the global Cleveland Bay Horse population.
In 2008 Andy was awarded the Rare Breeds Survival Trust / Marsh Christian Trust Award for Technical Support of Conservation of Biodiversity.
He completed a Doctorate entitled “Genetic Analysis and Breed Management of the Endangered Cleveland Bay Horse” as an invited mature student at the University of Lincoln in 2010.
Under the auspices of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust SPARKS has been extended to two more critically endangered equine breeds – the Suffolk Horse and the Eriskay Pony as well as to Vaynol Cattle and Andy has been made an Honorary Life Member of the RBST in recognition of his ongoing work.
He is a member of the RBST’s Expert Advisory Panel.
He has recently been made a Visiting Fellow at Nottingham Trent University, where is working with others in the field of Livestock Conservation and Bioinformatics.
In January this year Andy was one of four guest speakers at the National Equine Forums first webinar “Using Science to Save Our Breeds”.
Andy joins us on this Webinar to explain why the Exmoor Pony has joined the Cleveland Bay, Eriskay Pony and Suffolk Horse as a Priority Breed under the recently revised RBST Watchlist and to look at strategies breeders and Breed Societies might adopt to safeguard these breeds for the future.
More details to follow.