A STANDALONE show for young bulls on Craven Champions Day at Skipton Auction Mart saw every single rosette winner in the two show classes sell well into four figures.

All but one of the young bull show class winners fell to York area farmers and butchers, father and son Stephen and Anthony Swales, who also snapped up every single prize winner at Skipton’s opening young bull show last month.

At the latest renewal, they secured the two principals in the ten to 12-month-old show class, home-bred British Blue-crosses from another well-known father and son, William and Mark Keighley, of Manderlea Farm, Leathley.

The red rosette winner made £1,340, although it was the runner-up that achieved the day’s top call of £1,380. The Keighleys brought 11 bulls, which averaged £1,186 per head overall.

The Swales family also paid £1,260 for the first prize under ten-month bull, a home-bred British Blue-cross, out of a Blonde-cross cow, from John Fawcett, of Dalehead, Barden.

Both red rosette winners will now be prepared for the local show circuit this summer, when they will be paraded by Mr Swales Snr, his wife Barbara and their 19-year-old grandson Luke, a third generation butcher at the family-run Knavesmire Butchers in York.

All other Skipton buys – 24 in total, among them the second and third prize under ten-month class winners from, respectively, Peter Fawcett, of Long Preston, at £1,180, and Clapham’s Jonathan Townley, at £1,150 - will be further fattened at the Swales’s Haverland Farm in Melbourne, before returning to the food chain at their Albermarle Road butchers shop for this year’s May trade.

The remaining prize winner, the third prize ten to 12-month young bull from John Brewer, of Bleasdale, sold for £1,050 to Kirkby Malham’s Richard Brown.

Young bulls sold to an overall Continental-cross average of £954 per head, with a native average of £906. Other averages were: Store bullocks – Continental-cross £1,076, native £1,012, store heifers – Continental-cross £1,033, native £898.