Aberdeen Angus breeders underline importance of Great Yorkshire Show

Penny said: “My parents farmed near Pateley Bridge and it was an epic day out. It was something Mum got dressed up for, she bought a new outfit, complete with hat every year.

"It’s been great watching the metamorphosis of it over the years. I love the old buildings, particularly the cattle buildings. They are peculiar to the Great Yorkshire and are part of the infrastructure that everybody knows and loves. The Main Ring has to stay the same. If that changes the show has lost its soul.

“You see different people at the show now. Years ago it used to be literally the farming fraternity, now it’s much more open. Everybody’s just here for a day out, rather than just livestock or horses. I think it’s great because the footfall keeps the tills turning.”

David, a past president of the Aberdeen Angus Cattle Society, said while the show’s central location in the country made it accessible to many, it was held at the right time of year, when people had been to other shows. He said the show enabled them to bench-mark themselves in breeders within the breed.

Penny said: “The national is important because we are not only exhibiting to people who don’t know us, we are actually exhibiting our stock to fellow breeders. If you have a good year it’s brilliant and if you have a bad year you go ‘well it was only one man’s opinion on the day’ and walk of huffily! But that’s showing.”

The couple say showing is important to them as it is good marketing and that they sell a lot of cattle as a result of showing. David said: “Sometimes it doesn’t happen straight away, but people will come home and buy a bull and say I saw you at the Yorkshire and liked your type of cattle.

"Within any breed you’ve got variations within the breed and within the Angus you’ve got variations of type. We try and use what we perceive to be the best artificial insemination bulls on our best cows and hopefully they will breed a bull we can be used across the herd and it helps fix the type of cattle that we’ve got.

"We don’t follow fashion in terms of everybody’s using this or that bull, we breed the way we think it shoud be done for our market, because we sell very few bulls as a percentage to pedigree breeders, our market for bulls is mainly the commercial and dairy beef market. If the cattle that they produce, whether it goes to Dovecote Park or M&S or Aldi, because the cattle is hitting the spec and they are getting paid then they’ll come back and buy bulls from us. In bull sales, 80 per cent are to repeat customers. So showing is important.”

Last year the couple, who started their herd with three cows in 1995, won Reserve Champion Female at the national show with Tree Bridge Polly Perkins T699 and Reserve Champion Heifer Calf Tree Bridge Estella Z087. Tree Bridge Polly Perkins T699 also won her class at the Great Yorkshire Show.

Penny added: “Everybody has their own idea about what an Aberdeen Angus should look like, so that’s why there is such a variation within the breed. Showing is quite competitive on the day, but at the end of it we all have a beer together.”