A RYEDALE farmer has enjoyed success at Skipton Auction Mart’s 2016 pedigree beef season highlight, the annual Blue Wednesday show.

The event saw the sale of 14 pedigree British Blue bulls. The top call on the day was 4,200gns (£4,410), with the second top price of 4,000gns (£4,200) achieved by a well-bred third prize winner from Dylan Townend, who runs the Clifftown pedigree herd at Quarry Farm, Broughton, near Malton.

His February, 2014-born Clifftown Jock, junior interbreed champion at last year’s Newark & Notts County Show, is by the renowned Belgian AI sire, Boherard Cantona, and a maternal brother to Mr Townend’s 2014 Blue Wednesday supreme champion, Clifftown Horatio - the first-ever British Blue bull he had bred and shown.

The dam of both, Tamhorn Duchess, was acquired at the Tamhorn dispersal sale, with her latest Skipton frontrunner finding a new home with Jamie Loveridge, who has a cross-bred commercial beef herd at Great Bells Farm on the Isle of Sheppey off the Kent cost. He will put his new acquisition on to Simmental-cross-Friesian cows with the aim of producing more shape in his calves.

The overall bull average was £3,465 per head, significantly up on the 2015 average of £3,255.

Craven Cattle Mart’s general manager Jeremy Eaton said: "The sale was the most successful to date and further established the venue as a centre for the breed.

"Demand from dairy farmers provided a good underlying trade, with further competition seen from premium suckled calf producers, many of whom had travelled considerable distances to attend the sale."

The Skipton season concludes with the Ling Fields Beef Cattle Fair, the annual multi-breed show and sale of pedigree beef breeding cattle, on Wednesday, May 25.