DAIRY farmer David Smith again demonstrated his prowess in the rearing calf show arena, sending out the supreme champion at Skipton Auction Mart’s autumn fixture.

Mr Smith, who runs a Holstein Friesian commercial dairy herd at Bent Farm, Sutton-in-Craven, presented a well-bred British Blue-cross bull calf to land the leading spoils.

The five-and-a-half-week-old victor sold for the day’s leading price of £460 to Martin Hutchinson, from Mixenden.

The reserve championship fell to brothers Peter, Paul and Shaun Sowray, of Bishop Thornton, with their first prize Limousin-cross bull calf. It sold for £430 to Matthew Dibb, of Dob Park, Otley.

The Sowrays also turned out the first prize British Blue-cross heifer calf, which sold for £365 to Tony Binns, of Clint, Harrogate, along with the second prize Blue-cross bull calf, which joined Dan Moxon in South Hiendley, Wakefield, for £400.

For good measure, the Sowray family sent out the first prize other Continental heifer calf, a Charolais, which sold at £370, again to Mr Dibb.

The Houseman family, of Church Farm Enterprises in Burton Leonard, were among this group of leading performers, sending out all three prize winners in the Continental heifer stirk show class, with one of them top at £430, becoming a further Dibb acquisition.

The same vendors were responsible for the first prize winner in the native bull calf show class, an Aberdeen Angus that made £300, along with the second prize Blue-cross heifer calf, a £390 purchase by the Abbott brothers in Dacre.

Native calves were unstoppable, with the first man into the ring, Duncan Holme, of Bolton Abbey, averaging £337.50 for his consignment of four Aberdeen Angus calves while nephew Alan Middleton, also of Bolton Abbey, made £320 with an Angus bull calf.

Black and whites saw similar trade on the week, with handier, fleshy calves making £75 to £100 and commercial types £55 to £75, with the very best up to £145, this for a bull calf from WA Brown, of Earby.

Robert Metcalfe, of Brearton, Otley, won the Limousin-cross heifer calf show class, his charge selling for a class high of £330 to Gargrave’s Paul Drinkall. He also had the top price £320 Limousin-cross bull calf.

The 69-strong entry produced a Continental-cross selling average of £341.76 per head, native average of £311.40 and black and white mean of £71.87.