The Farmers Mart Feb/Mar 2015 - Issue 38 | Page 12

The Farmstead Newton Farm
Area Club. We were very
pleased with that! Showing your
stock gets people interested in
you and when they see a good
bull they are more inclined to
buy the daughters.
“Our Longhorn herd calve
from January to April. We sell
steers through Thirsk and
maybe keep one bull a year to
sell. Any females we don’t want
are sold as breeding stock at
the pedigree sales,” he said.
Their commercial suckler
herd of 55 crossbred cows is
a mix of all kinds of crossbreds
but they are all put to a Blonde
bull. They used a Charolais X
and a Limousin before settling
on Blonde.
“We’re after a decent back
end that will be easy to calve and
that’s what having a Blonde bull
does for the herd,” Graham told
me. “The crossbred herd calves
all year round so we always have
stock to sell. We are also pretty

good at holding on to our cows.
We have a Charolais X that is 20
and has a calf currently at foot;
and one or two at 17 years. Our
oldest Longhorn is 13. I don’t
like to see them go and I do get
attached to them but if they still
throw good calves that is what

it’s all about. Our cows don’t
have a lot of stress and so long
as they have a calf a year they
are paying their way.”

‘We’re after a
decent back end
that will be easy
to calve and that’s
what having a
Blonde bull does
for the herd
The Walkers’ c