Cracking Craven champs

Following on from a successful Craven Champions day, Skipton auction mart are doing similar business in the dairy sector.

Dairy farmer Jeremy Taylor made it a record-breaking five-strong haul of Craven Dairy Auction championship victories at last Monday’s show and sale when a total of 77 pedigree and commercial cattle represented the highest-ever entry since the reintroduction of the fixture at the beginning of 2005.

A home-bred pedigree Holstein Friesian heifer from Jeremy’s Smellows herd at Small House, Broughton, near Skipton, won him his latest title and received the Craven Dairy Trophy from animal feeds supplier BOCM-Pauls.

Newly-calven on February 1 and giving 35kg, Flossie, by the Smellows stock bull Sterndale Pirot, sold locally for £1200, joint top price of the day, to Kenneth Wright, of R L Wright and Son, Airton.

Also making £1200 when sold to Alan Outram, Bury, was the first prize winner in the newly-calven cows class from the Whinhill Holstein Friesian commercial herd of father-and-son dairy farmers Malcolm and Robert Swires, of Haverah Park, Beckwithshaw, Harrogate.

The Swires are regularly among Craven Dairy Auction honours and took the championship at this year’s opening fixture last month. This time around, their six-strong contingent of newly-calven cows and heifers all sold for over £1,000, with a total of 17 entries in the show topping four figures.

Jennings Farmers Ltd, of Hill House, Ripon, were on the mark again with their Abbeyhouse herd when sending out the reserve champion, another home-bred pedigree heifer which had calved four days earlier and came to market giving 32 litres.

The 83 point classified two-year-old, by the Jennings’ own Bilsrow Leduc Ricky, who has already produced a number of prize winners at Skipton, sold for £1180 to H H Knowles, Preston.

Alan Outram also paid £1110 for another pedigree newly-calven heifer from the Smellows herd, while the best of the in-calf heifers from Stephen Coates, of Baildon, realised £920 when bought by David Shuttleworth, of Gargrave.

A strong batch of maiden heifers from Michael Mallinson, of Mount Tabor, Halifax, including the first in class, sold well to a top price of £635, this entrant being bought by H Speak, of Eccleston, Chorley.

There was also keen interest in a trio of Jersey maiden heifers from Richard Saxby, of R J and C A Saxby, Coniston Cold, with a 12-month-old show heifer making a healthy £530 when sold to G M and J D Pye, of Arkholme, Carnforth.