THERE was a standout local success at the North of England Beef Shorthorn Club’s ninth annual show and sale at Skipton Auction Mart when Stuart and Gail Currie’s Beautry herd secured a scintillating championship and reserve championship double, with the overall runner-up setting a new centre sales record by far for the breed of 11,000gns.

The outcome capped a tremendous year in the exhibition arena for the Curries, of Rathmell, who just the previous week had sent out both the supreme champion male and overall reserve supreme champion female in the Beef Shorthorn show calf classes at Agri-Expo 2018 in Carlisle.

The Curries, who established their pedigree herd at Beautry House in 2010, were over the moon with their high profile successes at their local auction mart, describing the outcome as “just amazing .... absolutely fantastic,” notably in regard to the record price performer, Beautry Shuna Liesl, who annihilated the previous centre record of 6,500gns, established at last year’s Skipton sale.

From the Beautry herd’s strongest dam line, Liesl, first tapped out as winner of one of the junior heifer show classes, before being awarded the reserve championship, is an April, 2017, roan daughter and among the first crop of calves to Poyntington Himself, an 8,000gns acquisition by the Curries in 2016. He was also responsible for their Agri-Expo supreme champion and reserve.

The dam, Croxtonpark Shuna Titania, a half sister to this year’s Agri-Expo female champion, was bought as a calf at foot with her mother. Her sale-leading daughter, who is free of the bull, was claimed at a packed ringside by Thistledown Cowford Farms, of Bankfoot, near Perth.

The same buyers also went to 5,800gns to purchase the Curries’ supreme champion, Beautry Rose Lolita, winner of her own shown class and described as “truly outstanding” by Scottish show judge George Irving, who runs the Mountbenger pedigree Beef Shorthorn herd in Selkirk.

The two show principals really caught the eye of Thistledown Cowford Farms’ head stockman, Charlie Reed, who was bidding on behalf of owner, Sandy Anderson.

Mr Reed, who is assisted on the 500-acre farm by his own daughter, Charley, deemed them the two outstanding animals in the sale and they will now form an integral part of the Cowford Beef Shorthorn herd, which was only established in February this year.

“We backed his judgment. We like the Skipton sale and have always felt there are some outstanding Beef Shorthorn cattle in Yorkshire. Our aim is to build up a quality herd in Scotland that will become a contender for top lots.

“The plan now is to flush these two highly promising heifers and take some embryos out of them,” explained Mr Anderson, who has other farming interests in the Cotswolds and Leicestershire.