William and Andrew Cowx: Pleasing returns from this year’s crop of sheep

10 November 2010

All the cattle except for 12 are now inside and on to winter rations of second cut silage, which is proving to be rather wet and they are not too happy with it, but we need this pit emptied first to put cattle in after Christmas.

Although the land is now quite wet, stock have come inside leaving it in as good a condition as we have seen it for a number of years and providing some good sheep grazing.

Hopefully, most of the ewes are now tupped and the tups are now with the ewe lambs. We have sold this year’s entire crop of lambs, the last making £73 and 14 stores at £56.

So as a new sheep year starts, looking back on the past year, I think our sheep will have done better than the cattle with a return of 1.7 lambs sold for each ewe put to the tup and an average lamb price of £70 – £120 per ewe – which I am reasonably happy with.

Last month we were getting bulls ready for the sale at Carlisle, one of which would not walk a step with its halter on at home, however we took it to the sale and it walked out of the trailer, through the inspection and even won a first prize in its class but that is the end of the good news.

Trade was very difficult, with a large percentage of good bulls going home unsold and many disappointed vendors. The reported average of £6,000 is very misleading and is in danger of putting the commercial man off thinking he would have to pay so much for a bull.

There was an excellent show of bulls and what appears to be a good bull at home can look very ordinary when you get it to the auction. We sold three of our four bulls so I suppose it was not too bad.

We were among the many people who went to Agri Expo. What an excellent show of both cattle and sheep were on display and a great credit to all exhibitors who had turned stock out to such a high standard.

I don’t think we will see a better show anywhere in the country. It was well organised and all credit must go to the people responsible for it – an excellent show and it did not cost a penny for entrance like many other shows.

Andrew has just returned from the Nuffield Farming Scholarship Conference in Edinburgh as a guest of Farmers Guardian where he enjoyed meeting the other ‘In Your Field’ contributors

We were very sorry to hear of the death of Alan Fotheringham, a larger than life character, much liked and respected by all who knew him. A great stocksman and judge he will be sadly missed.

Our thoughts go out to Mary and family.