Win an Albion Heifer Report
- 19 hours ago
- 3 min read
Our ‘Win an Albion Heifer’ prize draw, drawn on 5th December 2025, was won by Mrs Fiona Fleming from Suffolk; she was absolutely thrilled and excited when we phoned her moments after the Rally Up computer had drawn her ticket out. “I never win anything!” was exclaimed, but Fiona can no longer say that; there was just one special prize, Okeover Lottie, a pedigree, blue roan, bulling heifer by Speckles Ferdinand and Fiona had won her.
Lottie was very generously donated by Mr and Mrs Richard Toon, from the Okeover herd of Albions near Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Richard attended last year’s AGM (2025) and when fund raising was discussed, Richard suggested the ‘win a heifer’ prize draw, adding that he was willing to offer the prize. A wave of excitement visibly went around the room; how generous, what an idea! It’s always hard to fund raise as members are from all over the country and we are a small society but this could be done on-line and could attract all sorts of people to enter. Richard’s aim with this generous act was not to just help with fund raising but also to raise awareness of the Albion breed and tempt new cattle keepers to consider keeping Albions.
It was surprisingly hard to set up the prize draw due to requiring an on line buying set up and discovering that most banks do not approve of setting up payment for lotteries. That is why we sold the tickets through a third-party American firm called Rally Up which specialises in lotteries and could enable us to use PayPal. Rally Up were incredibly helpful, explaining the system via zoom calls and replying quickly to any queries. We also applied for a lottery license and printed ticket books in order to sell by cash as well, this was important, to be able to sell tickets at markets and sales and to people who ‘don’t do online’. Fliers were printed and put up in markets, at sales, vets and farm supply shops and such like. We of course used social media and shared posts to RBST, Farmers Guardian, Smallholders pages and so on, including ACS members of course.
In the end, an amazing £3010 was raised, of this £2740 were ticket sales. Basically, this meant that each ticket had a I in 280 chance of winning, much better odds than the National Lottery! A few people invested in 10 tickets and this increased their odds of winning significantly to a I in 28 chance which were impressive tactics! As we know, it was Fiona who won Lottie, she is actually a current ACS member but someone who has only just started keeping Albions and was looking to buy another heifer or two; she now has one for only £10!
Fiona didn’t hang around and, as Lottie had passed her pre-movement TB test, she drove down with her daughter to collect Lottie from Richard and Anita Toon. (See photo) As Fiona and her husband have a commercial dairy farm, they decided to ‘isolate’ Lottie at their daughter’s holding. The family immediately took it upon themselves to halter train Lottie. After a few struggles, Lottie is proving a natural and is on course to be shown at Fiona’s local shows this summer.
We wish the Fleming family the greatest fun and enjoyment with Okeover Lottie and we would like to thank Richard and Anita Toon for their extremely generous donation.
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