PRIMESTOCK buyer Mick Etherington, of Eldwick, was back at Skipton’s prime cattle ringside and became the day’s joint leading purchaser when securing four of the 18 under 30-month clean cattle penned for sale.

Three, all Limousin-cross entries, also accounted for the day’s leading prices. Top gross at £1,497 (249.5p/kg) was a 600kg heifer from Charles and Richard Kitching, of Grisedale Farm, Threshfield, while Silsden Moor’s Simon Bennett consigned the top price 610kg steer, which made £1,455 (238.5p/kg).

Also knocked down to the same buyer was a 535kg British Blue-cross heifer from L Bamforth & Sons in Wainstalls, Halifax, which sold for the joint highest price per kilo price of 253.5p/kg (£1,445).

The second joint high of 253.5p/kg fell to another 535kg Limousin-cross heifer from the Kitching brothers, bought by James Robertshaw for his own Robertshaw’s Farm Shop in Thornton.

He also claimed four cattle for Skipton-based Keelham Farm Shop, among them the top price per kilo steer, a 560kg Limousin-cross from Francis and Andrew Smith in Masongill at 249.5p/kg (£1,397).

The mart-based Barker’s Yorkshire Butchers was again among the buyers with two purchases. Among the retail cattle, 485kg+ heifers averaged 240.91p/kg and 560kg+ steers 242.19p/kg. The sale also included a number of commercial cattle, which sold well

Trade for an albeit small turnout of ten cull cows was unrelenting, a couple of meated dairies from G Pickersgill & Sons in Guiseley, comfortably achieving 133.5p/kg and 137.5p/kg, with Broughton’s Jeremy Taylor heading the gross prices with a £977 black and white.

Beef cows were equally good to sell, topping at 168.5p/kg, or £1,121, for a pure-bred Limousin from James Penter, of Litton, a first cross Blonde from George Sunderland, of Hebden Bridge, also catching the eye at 152.5p/kg, or £1,075. The overall cull cow selling average was a solid 128.59p/kg, or £805.63 per head.