SHEEP and cattle bred in the Teesdale area have featured highly in this year’s Great Yorkshire Show.
Top honours in the long-haired Wensleydale sheep category went to Anna Pennell and her mum Julie with their ewe, which had earlier earned them the champion female and ewe in full wool titles.
The family also took top spot in the shearling ewe and clipped shearling sections, earning them wins in three of the six Wensleydale categories.
The Pennells also reared the champion male Teeswater sheep which went on to be reserve champion of the breed. All of the animals were bred on the family farm at Redworth.
Simon and Emma Haley of Seamfold Highlands, in Eggleston, earned the junior champion and male champion in the Highland cattle class with Morgan Ruad of Seam.
Margaret 4th of Seam, known as Magic, took the reserve junior champion title, while Margaret 3rd of Seam (Mary) and Margaret first of Seam (Mia) earned second places in their categories.
Last year Seamfold Highlands were filmed by a television crew as they exhibited at the show.
At that time they took the overall breed champion title with their calf Merlin. Mrs Hayley said: “We were there from Saturday to Thursday so it was long, but it is good fun. We had a lot of people coming to ask about Merlin after seeing him on television.”
Mrs Haley said the titles add value to their stock and they had subsequently sold Mary and her calf, which had come runners-up, to a farmer from Scotland.
She said: “It was like selling snow to an Eskimo.”
Fresh from a successful tour to Scotland for the Royal Highland Show, Peter and Susan Addison’s Zwartble sheep again did them proud.
The Mickleton couple, from Hayberries Farm, exhibited a home-bred ewe which took top honours in the gimmer shearling class and went on to be reserve breed champion.
A dutch import, that also had success at the Highland show, performed well in Yorkshire and coming second in the aged ram category.
Mr Addison said: “He was a good buy. He has left us some good lambs and those will be coming through in the future.”
The Addisons took seven sheep to the show and earned a raft of positions including a third placed shearling ram, a sixth placed ewe, a third placed lamb and a fourth placed gimmer shearling.
