The Limousin bull Mereside Grant from the Hazard Family’s Grantham, Lincolnshire-based Mereside Herd has sold to a consortium of leading French Limousin breeders.
In what is just the second Limousin bull of UK breeding to be sold back to France, Mereside Grant combines pedigree and performance, carrying the noted breeding of Objat, Dauphin and Genial in his pedigree and having a Beef Value of LM+33, placing him within the top 10% of UK performance-recorded Limousins.
Grant is sired by Dormeur, a bull imported from France as a weaned calf and used extensively on heifers in the Mereside Herd. Dormeur was selected for his easy calving traits, combined with excellent breed character and muscle development. All traits he has passed on to his offspring.
His dam is the homebred cow Mereside Annette, a daughter of Obus, the 2002 Paris Show muscle champion. She is out of the French-bred cow Ginette, a dam which is leaving a lasting impression on the Mereside herd, with a number of retained females in the herd.
February 2011-born, Mereside Grant was sold following a visit to Mereside by a group of French breeders and has been bought by seven well-known French herds, namely: Gaec de Cancerles, Earl Moury, Richard Bournazel, Gaec Delmond, Nicolas Jammet, Gaec Les Chauvets and Regis Recoulin.
He is now destined for export to France in the coming weeks and, on arrival, will head straight to an AI stud for semen collection. Future plans include showing him at the 2012 French National Limousin Show.
A spokesman for the French consortium said they had been impressed by a number of female lines in the Mereside Herd and felt Mereside Grant was an ideal bull to produce the type of cattle demanded by the French market.
“We believe Mereside Grant is the perfect bull to produce the thick beefy type of cattle required in France. He has good muscle through his top and his ends and isn’t excessive in his bone either. He shows strong breed character in his head and importantly he is from a good female line. His mother is a good cow which is suckling another very good bull calf this year.”
Speaking on behalf of the Hazard Family, Roger Hazard said he was delighted to have sold Mereside Grant to the French consortium. “We’ve always paid close attention to the breed’s development in France and have, at various times, imported a number of leading bloodlines from France to complement our herd. The sale of Mereside Grant to this consortium is an exciting development for the herd and we look forward to seeing how his progeny perform in France in the coming years.”
In January this year, Grange Gervaise from the Grange Herd of Northamptonshire breeders George & Steven Smith, Brookfield Farm, London Road, Daventry, became the first UK bred Limousin to be exported back to France when selling to a consortium of French Limousin breeders.
