Yorkshire Christmas auctions hit the heights

Husband and wife Geoff and Margaret Booth presented what auctioneers described as a cracker of a calf to land the supreme championship at Skipton Auction Mart’s Christmas rearing calf show and sale.

As part of an 81-strong turnout, The Booths, of Dowshaw Farm, Lothersdale, won with a six-week-old, home-bred British Blue X bull calf by the Genus sire Governor, out of a Holstein dairy cow. Their beast sold for the day’s joint top price of £520 to North Lincolnshire’s Nigel and Maria Mason.

The Christmas show for cattle and prime lambs created an abundance of stock and buyers at Wharfedale Farmers Auction Mart in Otley, auctioneer Ian Smith said.

Sheep championship honours fell to David and Janice Wilson of Harome with their Texel lambs which weighed 44kg and sold for £200 a head to John and Karen Summers for their family shop. In the cattle ring, the top price cow at 159.5p/kg was shown by J M Wilson & Son of Nunnington for a black Limousin bought by A Atkinson Livestock Ltd of Elliscliffe.

Pateley Bridge’s Christmas show of prime beef and lamb had “a good entry of outstanding stock”, said auctioneer David Prince, who was pleased by strong young handler classes.

John Peel of Glasshouses won the under-10s class with a Texel lamb which sold for £140 to Kendalls farm butchers of Pateley Bridge and Bilton. The over-10s also brought success for the Peels with first prize going to Nadine and selling to Kendalls for £96.

The prime cattle champion was Ben Hardcastle’s Limousin heifer, weighing 655kg and selling for a mart record £3.85 per kilo to H Weatherhead & sons of Pateley Bridge and Grassington.

Meanwhile, Kitsons Butchers, which has shops in Hutton Rudby and Northallerton, is thought to be the first independent, family-run retail butchers to purchase the overall supreme champion beef cattle at all three of the country’s principal Christmas primestock shows in one year – the English, Royal Welsh and Scottish winter fairs.