The Farmers Mart Feb/Mar 2016 - Issue 44 | Page 56

Beacon Farm

Sheep shining bright
at Beacon Farm
Chris Berry talks with Paul & Maurice Cass at Scalby
»»AWARDS FOR WHAT
happens in a sale ring can
arguably be considered even
more important than those won
at a summer show. After all,
this is where the results really
do count as it is where prices
are paid. That’s certainly how a
lot of commercial pigs, sheep
and cattle men see it and in
December last year I had the
pleasure of meeting up with
Paul Cass of Beacon Farm,
Scalby and his fiancée, Cath, at
York Auction Centre’s annual
awards following the Christmas
Primestock Shows and Sales.
Paul won for topping the
market most times (eight)
during the year. Not bad at all
for someone who only recently
started bringing his stock to
York.
“I’ve sold at other markets
and done well at those too,”
he explained. “But at York
everything seems to have
clicked even better. It only
takes me about an hour to get

there on the A64 and I was
complimented on my stock from
the moment I arrived. There
are plenty of buyers who are
looking for what I’m producing
and that’s what makes all the
difference.”
Paul currently has a flock
of 300 breeding ewes that
includes Texel X, Beltex X,
Charollais X and Suffolk X. He
started out with a flying flock
of Mules. It was a short while
after Foot and Mouth year in
2001 that he began his move to
producing quality finished stock
from his own breeding ewes.
“Initially I went back to a
flying flock buying Mules again,
but I also bought some Suffolk
X and Texel X to improve the
quality. That’s when I started
setting up the sheep operation
on my own around 2002-03. I’d
always put everything to a tup
once they were here and my
first experience of a Beltex tup
was in 2004 when I borrowed
one from Thomas Hunter of

56 Feb/Mar 2016 www.farmers-mart.co.uk

Hunmanby. It was a small tup
but he told me that if I fed him
up I could have use of him. He
grew while tupping the ewes
and went well.”
It was a poor trade in 2005
when Paul took his lambs and
ewes to market and he took
the bold move of bringing them
back home.
“Granddad said at the time
‘What are you doing? Trailer’s
still full?’ and it was! I wasn’t
going to sell them at the price
offered because that was what
I’d bought them in at. So I fed
them and lambed them – we
had 100 acres of our own corn
and we’d fortunately come by
another 25 acres of grass so
that had been in the back of my
mind anyway. I bought a creep
feeder, chucked them in a field
and decided to see how they
would d