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MARKET REPORT - WEDNESDAY 29TH FEBRUARY 2014 PRESS

Booths seal BFL females hat-trick at Skipton The North Craven-based Smearsett flock of WA & A Booth clinched its third successive championship at Skipton Auction Mart’s annual registered show and sale of Blue Faced Leicester females. Father and son David and Robin Booth, of Old Hall Cottage, Feizor, secured a memorable hat-trick with their first prize gimmer hogg, by one of their highly regarded stock tups, C1 Shafthill, acquired as a lamb from Northumberland breeder John Smith-Jackson, of Melkridge, near Haltwhistle.

 

The dam, M1 Stargreen, is by another top-notch Smearsett ram known at home as Red Tag. The victor created intense interest at the ringside, before falling for 1,300gns (£1,365), top price of the day by some way.

The Booths also entered a full sister to the champion, which was chosen as the second prize gimmer hogg by show judge Neil Heseltine, of Malham Moor. She commanded the day’s second highest price of 700gns.

Both the Booths’ champion and second prize gimmer hogg fell to the same buyer, Derbyshire’s C Davies, who also paid 300gns for the second prize ewe from Joe and Nancy Throup, who run the Chelker flock in Draughton. The home-bred two shear has been scanned in lamb with triplets to a Tympany Gill tup.

Reserve champion was the first prize ewe from the Oddacres flock of John and Claire Mason in Embsay. The home-bred two-shear comes from some of the renowned flock’s best breeding lines, being by Y5 Oddacres, out of a dam sired by the Booth family’s well thought-of Z7 Smearsett.

Scanned with a single lamb to Low Tipalt A4, bred near Carlisle by Ron Wilson before being acquired by the Masons for the £3,500, the runner-up sold locally for 370gns to the Ilkley Moor flock of Ellis Bros in Addingham Moorside.