British Amphibian Keepers Society - Stafford (UK) August 5th 2012

Hello folks.

We are the British Amphibian Keepers Society (or BAKS), a newly founded not for profit society dedicated to amphibian keepers here in the UK.

We will be holding our first annual meeting on the 5th August 2012 at St Leonards Sports and Social Club, Stafford. This will be members only, however membership will be available on the door if you prefer this to joining online.

Membership costs £5 a year, and includes a twice yearly newsletter and entrance to 1 annual meeting.

If you are a breeder and would like a table, tables are £11 each, or if you do not feel you require a full table we can negotiate table sharing for you, basically because we would really like to encourage more caudate breeders to attend. Please note that anybody holding a pet shop license is not eligable to sell or trade vertebrate livestock at our members meetings, and that all vertebrate livestock traded MUST be captive bred surplus stock.

You can join the British Amphibian Keepers Society, and/or get more information about us or the annual meeting (including a map showing the location) at our website at B.A.K.S.

We will update our site, and this thread, as more breeders book tables.

We hope that UK cuadate lovers will show their support, and also that we see many of you there.

Regards

Ade, BAKS committee member

PS. Thanks to the admins for giving us permission to post this.

Thanks to the brilliant response we have had so far from phib lovers joining, we are now able to run a special offer!

Tables booked between now and midnight April 30th (UK time) will be just £8! Don't forget this includes membership for 1 person to the society, so in effect you'd be getting a table for just £3 during this offer.

Ade

More good news, this time especially valid to you caudate loving folks.

The first 3 people to book tables from which to sell captive bred (their own surplus stock) caudates will receive a SECOND free membership. This means that 2 caudate breeders can share a table if they wish WITHOUT the 2nd person having to pay for their membership.

This can be combined with the above offer, which means that until the end of April 2 caudate breeders can book a table to share for just £8!!! As opposed to the normal cost of £8+£5 for a second membership.

We are doing this to try to basically get more newt, salamander and axlotl breeders to have tables at the meeting, giving the caudate hobbyists more from the meeting.

Ade

More news, we have no added 2 new membership levels:-

For children 12 years and under membership is now £3.50 a year.
For children 8 years and under membership is now £1 a year.

Children 5 and under do not require membership to attend our meetings. I am sure that NOBODY expects parents to have to get a membership to bring their todller along. lol

Please note however that under 16s MUST be accompanided by an adult member to attend meetings.

Ade

Hiya

Just to update, if you are a caudate keeper who believes they can help others enter caudate keeping, and exhibit their animals, why not get in touch about booking an exhibition only table? Contact us and we can work out a deal for folks who want to exhibit their amphibians and give advice to other hobbyists only.

Ade

Is anyone interested in meeting up here ?

If so what do you think about us having a table for Caudata? Bring a few examples maybe of our animals perhaps.

Let me know if anyone is interested.

Julia

bellabelloo said:

Is anyone interested in meeting up here ?

If so what do you think about us having a table for Caudata? Bring a few examples maybe of our animals perhaps.

Let me know if anyone is interested.

Julia

Click to expand...

I am interested julia. I will have a few axolotls and P.waltl available.

I'm now planning on going after finding out about the meeting. I don't know if I'd be any use in helping with a stand but I'd keep a look out for you if you did. I might be able to loan some creatures for a display though if you needed any or didn't want yours to travel too far (I only live 20 mins away).

Just paid my £5 subscription, had problems booking a table but will do so at the first opportunity , i will have some juvy axolotls for sale and possibly some juvy P.waltl. I will also have a secret (not for sale) amphibian on display which is very uncommon and possibly not seen before in the UK (its not my A.andersoni morph) but you have to turn up to see it.

Ooooooh I'm quite excited now! Mystery caudate! If you do book a table you could sell my larval C. orientalis for me. (I would pay you to do it of course!). I might even be able to help out a little bit. Keep us updated of your plans, it'll be nice to meet some more caudata.org members there!

Your table is all sorted Ian, thank you for showing your support.

Would you caudata.org folks be interested in some BAKS t-shirts with some sort of caudate on them? Say a newt and a salamander or axolotl that you can buy as a souvenir on the day? We already have 1 design with a tree frog (convict tree frog) and a dart frog on it, so could easily whip one up with caudates on it.

This is the current design:-

front:-



back:-



We might change the t to black though, as the 2 we had made the image came out looking faded on the white.

Ade

jane1187 said:

Ooooooh I'm quite excited now! Mystery caudate! If you do book a table you could sell my larval C. orientalis for me. (I would pay you to do it of course!). I might even be able to help out a little bit. Keep us updated of your plans, it'll be nice to meet some more caudata.org members there!

Click to expand...

Sounds good, i am after some more C.orientalis myself. I am planning on selling some phibs myself but also want to promote the good care of axolotls with care advice etc.

BAKS are all about promoting good care of phibs Ian, so that's ideal.

Oh and we don't mention it much, but there will be fundraising activities throughout the day, raffles, tombola etc. If all goes well we hope to be able to donate a bit to the FBH.

Ade

Ian that's great. I'll try and contact you by PM near the time to arrange something. It'd be really helpful to sell them to people in person, but as they're all I have it's pointless me getting a whole table for myself. It'll be great to meet other caudata.org people.

BAKS I would definitely buy a souvenir t-shirt with a caudate on it!

I'll see what I can come up with Jane, just need to find pics of caudates that I can legally use, anybody care to volunteer a couple? lol I have a couple of our old axies from when we kept them, but they're way too blurry.

What would people prefer? A higher price for better quality, or lower quality but more affordable t-shirts?

Oh and you can call me Ade if you like.

Ade

Ok Ade. I have a few photos I'm happy for you to use, so long as its just for the t-shirts only and doesn't get used everywhere. See if you like them, I'm sure plenty of other people on here have great photos of their newts too.

I don't know how good they'll be for t-shirts but you can have a play with them and see if they work for you.

Anyone else got any photos?

They're brilliant Jane, thank you so much.

I showed my wife, and she reckons we should do more than one T-Shirt for them. So at the moment we're thinking of the current tree frog shirt, 2 or 3 designs of caudate shirt and possibly a dart frog shirt.

We're probably going to go with the cheaper option though, as the higher quality option would make the t-shirts really expensive, as in £20 and upwards. Who wants to pay that kind of money on a souvenir t-shrit these days? lol

Ade

Another update on this.

After chatting with the committee, we are leaving the table fee for sales tables at £8 per table. However, anybody requiring an 'exhibition' space the only requirement is that they hold a full adult membership (NOT including ones included with sales tables...) and give us plenty of notice that they want a space. We should be hiring a second smaller room especially for this purpose, in which we have one very long table (can fit other tables in as well), so the plan is to give space on a first come first served basis. Exhibition space will only be held until 11am when the doors open, at which time those already present and exhibiting will be allowed to use the space. Exhibitors may NOT sell from an exhibition space, sales may only be conducted from sales tables.

On a less formal note, I personally reckon the free exhibition spaces are a cool idea. I mean, who really wants to pay to show off their phibs and give out info about them, and is it really fair to ask them to when they're aiding other hobbyists and BAKS by doing so? Nope, we don't think so either. So if interested, drop me a PM, or contact me via the BAKS website (Adrian) and we'll discuss your requirements.

Ade

More good news, well I think it is anyway.

First up, we have confirmed Arcadia as sponsors for BAKS, mainly taking the form of a surpsie peace of phib equipment from them that will be awarded as a prize during the meeting. Everybody who attends will be entered into a free draw to win this surprise prize.

Next up, we are pleased to announce that Just Airplants will be having a table at the meeting, selling viv suitable plants, along with a few less suitable tillandsia for those who may be interested in these.

Oh and maybe a certain somebody might want to share another bit of good news.

We could still do with some more folksies selling their surplus captive bred caudates though.

Ade

All sounds good, will anyone be selling dart frogs there?