New Members
[log in to see names]Total Members: 131 (down 4 from last month)
Total NMC News subscribers: 68 (up 2)
The Value of Our Mice
Very few people would bat an eyelid at a thousand pound price tag for a pony or even a winning dog or cat. Has a mouse ever fetched such a high price? I think it is safe to say that it has not even come close. But why is that? Is it just size? Jewels are small, yet fetch even higher selling prices.
Our fancy mice of today have been selectively bred for decades. A fancy mouse can easily produce 5 or 6 generations per year. That’s well over 750 generations of selective breeding since the start. Nobody would doubt any entitlement of pedigree with this many generations of striving for excellence. Our mice are beautiful and elegant and the NMC is steeped in history, dating back to 1895. The knowledge of the mouse fancy and the standard of excellence is preserved through its members, yet it does not take an expert to recognise beauty in a good mouse. We should be proud of this fact and recognise that a good mouse is no less valuable than a good horse. Maybe not in monetary terms but surely from a cultural and aesthetic point of view.
Many fanciers, myself included, give mice away to new members for free, to encourage them and help them get started. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, these new members never make it to a single show. This is not true for everyone though, and we are lucky enough to have added some talented new fanciers to the list of members in recent months and years.
What I am trying to say is, if something costs nothing, it is worth less to most people, and we should attach a visible value to our mice by charging for them. I will start to charge new members £15 per mouse for my winning lines (and a bit less for the ones that are still in the project phase) and donate the money as prize money at Sheffield and Halifax. I hope this will make it easier to understand right from the start, that a mouse has a value.
On a different, but related note, the Rules and Standards are now available publicly on the NMC website, as per a decision by the executive committee. New Rules & Standards will be printed soon as well and sent out to members. Have a read. It’s interesting!
Cup Secretary
Sadly, I have received a resignation note from [log in to see names]. He will not continue in the post of Cup Secretary for personal reasons, as of the next showing season. I very much regret losing him as he has done an outstanding job. If anyone wants to step up to fill the post, please let me know as soon as possible. I can assure whoever takes over that they will find everything is extremely well organised with templates for every show schedule and every document. [log in to see names] has offered to do a full handover at the annual. It will be the start of a new mousing year, so a good time for the change.