Farm of the Week: Going to the Polls proved a real winner

WITH their distinctive coats and colourings, Red Polls are perhaps one of Britain’s most recognisable native breeds.

This summer the Red Poll World Conference and Tour will visit Yorkshire, with its incoming president and Yorkshire farmer Stephen Prescott once again welcoming farmers from across the world to exchange ideas and news on the breed he has farmed for more than half a century.

While the conference and tour will travel around the country for more than two weeks between May 28 and June 15, there will be a decent amount of time spent in Yorkshire with such luminaries as the Archbishop of York attending some of the meetings.

This will include a visit to the family’s operation’s in East Yorkshire. Based primarily at Lickham Hall in Scorborough, the Prescotts as a family have been in the area for more than century.

Mr Prescott and his wife Yvonne have spent a lifetime with the dual purpose animal and have, through the congress, been all over the world extolling their virtues.

“We started with the Red Polls in 1953. We put a Red Poll bull onto an Ayreshire cross to get rid of the horns.

“We have just gone on from there.”

The Ayreshire type dairy cattle began to be gradually phased out in favour of the Red Poll and the cows were all milk recorded until 1978 when the family decided to move out of milk.

They took the “EC Golden Handshake”, as Mr Prescott puts it, referring to efforts by the EC to alter production throughout member states.

Mrs Prescott refers to it as the day her family “got out of jail”, referring to the notoriously anti-social working patterns of a dairy farmer.

The farm now operates on a single suckler system, with heifers deemed unsuitable for breeding culled and sent on for beef. The other animals then go to the bull.

“Bull calves are kept entire and weaned at eight to 10 months old, fattened indoors, fed on grain and have ad lib hay or straw.”

Any bulls not sold as stock bulls are then bred up to as much as 600kg at about 14 to 18 months old before heading to slaughter.

Acting today primarily as a breeder of cattle, Mr Prescott and his wife have dealings with farmers all over the country and have even looked abroad for additions to their stock, sourcing animals very carefully.

“As a general rule I do not like to bring in cattle as it can mean disease coming in, this is the trouble with the short numbers involved,” he said.

Famed for their gentle nature and size, the Red Polls have a charm which has clearly captivated the couple.

“They really are very easy to manage, most of the time,” said Mr Prescott, referring to an incident earlier in the day of my visit when he had to deal with a breached calf, that had come out of his mother legs first. Fortunately, it survived.

It was Mr Prescott’s great-grandfather Robert who first came to the area in the late 1850s, with his great uncle and grandfather taking residency at Lickham Hall in 1882. Changes to the way the family handled their business, with the picturesque hall going out of the family’s ownership for a period before returning to Prescott control in 1970.

Several other pieces of land, including those at Wetwang and Lund, mean that the family in total runs 1,150 acres in the area.

The land at Scorborough is very different from the typical Wold land, home to very heavy blue clay running down to sand, gravel and peat bog – a big difference from neighbouring areas which have chalk, free draining land.

The Scorborough land is also 4ft below sea level, meaning that the land is home to permanent grass – with an average of 23-25 inches of rainfall falling on the land each year.

The couple also run a small haulage business and stores bird feed for a local firm.

Those in attendance will come to the congress from as far away as New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Uruguay and the USA with the event having been run since 1976. It has taken the couple all over the world to the various congress events held internationally, with Mr Prescott and his wife having seen Red Polls in Canada with icicles hanging from their noses and at pasture in the tropical climate of Jamaica – a fact perhaps illustrative of the breed’s versatility.

“It is educational as much as anything,” said Mr Prescott, discussing the value of the congress events. “You get a real exchange of ideas from all over the world. Not all of the ideas will work out in this country but some will.”

The couple have three children, all of whom are also involved in the farming industry.

There will be much by way of subject matter for the congress, including what part the Red Poll can play in the challenge the world faces to double its current rate of food production in order to cope with rising population levels,

“Of course the big question is how we will adapt to that,” Mr Prescott said. “Using it as a cross breed to produce new breeds can help play a role.”

He uses the example of a crossing a Red Poll with a Holstein dairy cow which will produce a calf with increased longevity.

Also bound to feature in discussions will be the debate on GM crops and the attempts to bring in so-called ‘Super Dairies’, such as the failed scheme at Nocton.

As well as visiting the Prescott’s farms in East Yorkshire, delegates will also see some of the Red Polls at Temple Newsam, Leeds, and will hold a conference at York’s Hilton Hotel, with guest speakers to include Howard Petch and the founder of Weeton’s supermarket Andrew Loftus, a fellow Red Poll farmer.