COW health and welfare is uppermost in the mind for David Shuttleworth who farms in partnership with his wife Karen at Home Farm in Gargrave where they run a flying herd milking 525 dairy cows twice a day on their 430-acre farm .

It has been all change this year as up until 1 April David was in partnership with his brother John and their parents Tommy and Vera .

David and Karen have two children Henry ( 11 ) and Robert ( 9 ) and the four of them were together at the Great Yorkshire Show in July showing their Heber Park Beltex sheep , which they say with good humour is a hobby that has got out of hand .

‘ I ’ m a dairy farmer ,’ says David . ‘ But the sheep are something that we can all do together and that we enjoy as a family .

It ’ s different to dairy farming which I do all day , every day and have done all my life and to see the boys wanting to take sheep into the show rings in the breed classes as well as taking part in the young handlers competition , as they did at Harrogate this year was really great .’

‘ I used to have a fantastic time attending the show years ago , but to show there is quite different . It ’ s not easy but we really enjoy it and the camaraderie that comes from all breeders being together .’

Karen ’ s background is entrenched in sheep breeding . Her father John Bradley is a hill sheep farmer , one of the best known Dalesbred and Swaledale breeders and he was successful once again at the Great Yorkshire Show with Dalesbred breed champion . Karen works with land agents WBW who are based

at Skipton livestock market where she handles stewardship , basic payment and production grants for farmers .

The Shuttleworths picked up a couple of rosettes but David was particularly pleased with the champion tup lamb that also took the breed championship .

‘ We sold his mother in January when she was in-lamb with him . Top breeder Ali Jackson bought our ewe and won with the tup lamb out of her . I was as proud of that as anything else . Ali has been brilliant with us since we started with the Beltex when we bought three in Lanark livestock market 14 years ago .’

‘ We have bred up from those initial three and today we have a pedigree Beltex flock of 20-30 breeding ewes . When we had bred for 10 years we

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