British Blue Cross Takes Champion and Top Price at Skipton
11th September 2017
A British Blue-cross bull calf from JP & KE Hartley of Lane House Farm, Beamsley, took the Championship and made the day’s top call of £555, the highest price of the year to date, at the Autumn Rearing Calf Show at Skipton on Monday 11th September.
The show judge, Matthew Dibb, of Dob Park, Otley, who had little hesitation in nominating the 40-day-old home-bred youngster as his overall title winner.
The calf is by the easy calving Genus dairy sire, Greystone Fox, and the seventh calf of one of the family’s older cows, a first-rate Friesian-cross who is herself a daughter of another well-proven Genus sire.
“While we have used hundreds of straws from the same sire, it is the cow who is key to the breeding. She’s an awesome beast. We don’t see many calves like this. As soon as it was born we knew it was a good one,” enthused Alan.
The Sowray brothers from Bishop Thornton, were again to the fore with several rosette winners, including the first prize British Blue-cross heifer calf, a Tweeddale Gee Whiz daughter sold for a section high of £430 to brothers Stephen and Malcolm Abbott in Dacre.
