FARMERFOCUS
FARMERFOCUS
Bill Metcalf
Bill and Jonathan Metcalf
rent 89ha (220 acres) of
grassland, plus moorland
grazing, near Barnard
Castle, and own a further
unit 12 miles away, both
are situated in the Less
Favoured Area of Teesdale.
Farms are stocked with 120
sucklers, including 20
pedigree Blonde
dAquitaines, and 1200
ewes with 200 replacements
WE WERE recently contacted by the North Of England Blonde dAquitaine Club to see whether they could look around our cattle. Never having been involved in such a visit, we did not quite know what to expect.
The day began with an interesting visit to the Hallmark herd of Blondes near Darlington, which was followed by lunch before travelling to High Shipley. Here, the 30 plus visitors judged bulls, heifers and suckler calves with two of the female members winning the prizes for being closest to agreeing with our judgement.
We then took visitors on a long trek to see our cattle, both pedigrees and commercial sucklers. With this being well over a mile and downhill, we almost faced mutiny half way around. This was until we informed the group that refreshments would be waiting at the bottom and transport would be provided to pick up vehicles left way up the hill at the main farm.
Roy was the only member of the party with the benefit of having his own deck chair, but unfortunately it was in the form of his shirt.
The response from our visitors seemed favourable and thankfully the day was made that bit more enjoyable by the addition of that rare commodity of late – yes, the sun.
The Bluefaced Leicester gene tests came back with about a quarter ARR/ARQ, half with the ARR/ARR. Relatively few had breeding restrictions and none had VRQ genotypes which result in a slaughter certificate.
We believe this is reasonably in line with the breed. We will use a stock tup which is ARR/ARR to tup a few of the better bred, poorer testing ewes, but will not have to make any changes to breeding for most ewes in the flock.
We still cannot understand why AHQ/AHQ genotypes are classified as having little resistance to scrapie by the plan. If we get an opportunity to purchase a Swaledale tup from this relatively rare group, the NSP would certainly not stop us. The AHQ/AHQ genotype was previously classified as the second most resistant group to scrapie. *