Primestock trade again solid at CCM Skipton
Primestock trade at CCM Skipton shows no sign of letting up, with solid prices again seen across all classes of cattle and sheep at the latest weekly Monday turnout.
There was a better quality entry of sheep all round - 3,244 head in total, the 2,133 Spring lambs among them a sharper trade on the week, with the overall average up £4 per head at £108.52, or 256.3p/kg.
South Yorkshire’s Tom Hill and Ruby Wright, of Mill Farm, Doncaster, who have regularly been among the high price achievers with their Continental-x lambs at Skipton of late, stepped up a gear to land their first-ever monthly prime lamb championship.
They took the title with a pen of five 40kg Beltex-x picked out by Lincolnshire show judge Steve Dorey, who is also due to judge the Butchers Lambs show classes at the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate next Thursday.
The Hill & Wright farming partnership run a flock of around 1,000 breeding ewes, predominantly Texel x, along with a 65-strong Simmental pedigree cattle herd. Their champion pen sold for £148 per head, or £3.70 top price per kilo, to Knavesmire Butchers in York, another pen among a 55-strong consignment from the same home doing better at joint top gross of £155, or 322p/kg for 48kg Texels purchased by Kendalls Farm Butchers in Harrogate and Pateley Bridge.
There was no let up in trade for 1,000-plus cast sheep, especially for three-quarters and full meat ewes, well-bred types with size making £130-plus, with first-cross ewes £120-£135. Trade topped at £181.50 for Texels from Hurries Farm in Otterburn. Cull ewes averaged £82.51 and cast rams £115.94.
Over in the prime cattle arena, there was again a very good trade for fed Continental cattle among the 15 under 30-month clean cattle on offer.
Threshfield brothers Charles and Richard Kitching clinched a fourth successive monthly championship with a 575kg British Blue-x heifer again claimed by Knavesmire Butchers at 296.5p/kg, or £1,705, both top of the shop on price, to complete a prime champions double for the Albermarle Road shop.