NE Regional Club Report 2008

North Eastern Limousin Cattle Breeders Club

Club Report 2008

A good year for the North East club started in January with a very interesting talk by Igenity on their work in genetics and gene markers in the beef industry.

This was followed in February by the Interbreed quiz. Teams from the Angus, Shorthorn, Simmental, Dexter and Charolais joined us for an excellent night with a great result. The Limousin team came second to the Angus team who will organise the 2009 quiz.

An excellent talk by Jonathan Statham on embryo breeding was the meeting in March. He explained how everything was not always as rosy as some would make us believe and how many factors influenced the outcome of flushes including semen quality, weather, day length and organisation of farmers etc.

In April a total clearance was seen at the club sale at Leyburn. A bull from A J Mason of the Oddacres herd made the top price of 2000 guineas.

The club were also very lucky to be the first club to visit Smiths of Bloxham. A bus was hired and 30 or so members or non-members went to Oxfordshire for the day. The members were impressed with the quietness of all the cattle considering they had come from so many places. Some excellent calves by Wilodge Vantastic were seen. He seems to be putting a stamp on his progeny. Our thanks went out to Peter Smith, John Wilson and all the helpers for the organisation of the judging and their hospitality.

Another herd visit was the order of the day in June, when approximately 50 members and guests went to the Millington herd of John Weatherall. It was a cold but dry day on the Wolds and we had an excellent visit with John showing his knowledge of the cattle on show including a tremendous field of recipient cows with a some great embryo calves at foot. A hog roast followed.

In July the Great Yorkshire Show took place with livestock, although numbers were down due to Blue Tongue. Thanks to Phyllis Orton and her many helpers who made the hospitality stand such a success.

The Limousin champion was Millington Tangerine which went on to win the reserve overall champion. Another female from the Millington stable, Millington Choice, was the junior champion and overall junior interbreed champion. Other animal to note were male champion, Greenhill Viper, from Cormack McDowall Partners and junior male champion, Rombalds Conan from Anne Hirst.

In August the sun shone for one Sunday as 70 or so members and guest went on an away day to Cumbria to sample the hospitality of the Normans. Unfortunately this was the first dry day for some time and the land was too wet. However four classes of cattle had been brought inside for us to judge. The master judge was David Thomlinson and the overall winner of the judging was John Swales. Our thanks to Eric, Elaine, Craig and Michael for all their hard work on an excellent day.

The herd competition took place in September with John and Mary Logan of the Homebyres herd travelling over 1200 miles to judge the 22 herds. Our thanks to them for taking the time to judge and then return in November to award the prizes at the annual dinner.

September also saw the bull and heifer derby at the Nidderdale show. First in the bulls section was Anne Hirst’s Rombalds Conan and in heifer section was Brontemoor Camilla from Stephen and Ruth Priestley. The young breeder of the year was Richard Priestley who had had an excellent year being third in the individual judging at the Royal Show and the highest placed Englishman (third) in Ireland.

Herd Competition Results