Gambles make it six on the trot in CCM Skipton Christmas cast ewe show
Annual Christmas shows for cast ewes and cull cows again followed hot on the heels of the high profile festive primestock fixtures at Skipton Auction Mart.(Mon, Nov 26)
It was normal service as usual when Easingwold husband and wife, Ken and Hazel Gamble, of Brickyard Farm, sent out the cast ewe champions for an unprecedented sixth consecutive year, again with a pen of five pure-bred Texels.
All home-bred by a brace of rams from the Nesbitt family’s Alwent flock in Durham, they headed the section prices when selling at £109.50 each to Yorkshire Halal Meats for its supermarket in Alice Street, Keighley.
The Gambles sold another Texel pen at the same price, plus three more at £100 each. The overall cull ewe average for a strong turnout of over 400 head was £47.72.
The festive cast cattle show, judged by Gilstead’s Mick Etherington, was won for the first time by father and son, Mark and Ben Webster, who trade as EB Webster at Whitakers Barn Farm, Cracoe. Standing champion was their pure-bred six-year-old Simmental cow, mother of three calves, which sold for a section-topping £1,007.
Brian Lund, of Walshaw, Hebden Bridge, presented the second and third prize beef-bred cows, both British Blues, which sold to a top of £974, while also catching the eye with the leading per kilo price of 153.5p/kg, or £913, with a Limousin-cross was Don Leeming, of Ramsgill.
The first and second prize dairy-bred cull cows both came from G Pickersgill & Sons, of Guiseley, selling to section highs of £739 and 103.5p/kg.
Trade remained cool for the 31 cast cattle penned for sale, although a good line-up of bidders was present to put cows away onto feed for the New Year. Meated dairies sold around 100p/kg, steaking types making into the mid 90s. Meat in the beef-crosses was similarly steady, though there was again interest in feeders. The overall section selling average was £609.92 per head, or 92.5p/kg,
Following the previous day’s Christmas fixture, just three under 30-month clean cattle were on offer, these selling to a high of £1,323, or 182.5p/kg, for a Hereford-cross from Bradley’s Ed Parker.
Also sold the same day were 3,176 prime lambs and trade improved on the week when reaching an overall selling average of £79.52 per head, or 180.51p/kg. Topping the sale at £114 per head, or 259.1p/kg, was a Beltex pen from Linton’s Thomas Boothman.