Great Yorkshire Show

Great Yorkshire Show.

A revamped program saw an earlier kick off for the Bluefaced Leicester’s and the Judge, Alec Brown, who was due to oversee the proceedings last year but due to Covid couldn’t make it, cast his expert over the sheep up before him. He fair rattled through the tup classes, which were down considerably on their number, but come the gimmer classes there was a much harder job on his hands, with some strong classes, especially the gimmer shearling class, which had some real depth of quality.

The days Champion came from the ewe class, with a powerful sheep from Paul Fairburn, Marriforth flock, catching the judge’s eye from the off. Shown by Paul’s son, Henry, this sheep, by the K13 Cottage, is proving to a stalwart of the flock, already having sold a son out of her last year for £12,000. Not just a good looker, she is breeding well, with a gimmer lamb out of her taking 2^nd prize in the gimmer lamb class and a pair of tup lambs which will hopefully be heading to the autumn sales. After taking the breed championship, she went on to take the reserve champion in the non MV interbreed section too.

Pushing hard in the female championship was the first prize gimmer from Graham Jackson. This powerful sheep, which was the reserve breed champion, was bought out of Carlisle this spring from James Middleton from the Wharfdale flock, by the £16,000 P4 Dawyck bought in Hawes with Gavin White and out of a Carry House bred ewe.

The male champion came from the Emmotts flock with an embryo lamb by the £20,000 K1 Steel out of a Midlock ewe by L27 Midlock, out of the old Midlock F70 which has bred so well over the years. The reserve champion was a big powerful tup from Hannah Stenton.