SKIPTON Auction Mart welcomed the largest crowd of buyers seen ringside so far this season on Monday for its second show and sale. Hoggs with lambs at foot, staged alongside the annual Pennine Hill Sheep sale, with an equally large turnout of almost 600 breeding sheep.

Hoggs and lambs sold to £310 per outfit for the first prize pen of five Texels with singles from Nick and Charlotte Brown, Lancaster, bettered at £315 for the second prize pen from the same home.

North of England Mule hoggs sold to £230 for ten with singles from HF Stubbs and Son, Rathmell.

Other better pens of strong Mule and Texel hoggs with singles making £200-plus.

Texel shearlings with twins sold to £300 per outfit from A Neal, Queensbury, the same vendor also hitting £230 with shearlings and single lambs

Older lowland sheep were a sharp trade, notably those with strong lambs, Texel with twins from Colin Fewster, Linton, selling to £270, the Wardle family from Bugthorpe, York, hitting £260 with good Mules with twins.

The hill sheep sale had a good following; the Bland family, from Crowden in Derbyshire, returning with their yearly consignment of Swaledale outfits to stand first and second in the single lamb show class, of which the family is multiple past winners.

They also set the trade alight when selling Swaledale ewes and single gimmer lambs to £305 per outfit, with others at £290 and £245.

At the same day’s fortnightly Craven Dairy Auction, father and son, Matt and Mathew Bell, from Semerdale, Leyburn, won the show with their 33kg per day heifer bought as a calf from Metcalfe Farms in Wensleydale.

This Denovo Outlay-sired milk heifer, Washfold Cliff Norita, 11, fresh on May 11, headed home with regular buyer Richard Sutcliffe, Queensbury, at £2,200.

Milkers averaged £2,100 and topped twice at £2,350, firstly for the reserve champion and first prize cow from Norman and Chris Bell, of the local Mireclose herd in Cowling.

This second calver with a great udder and full of milk was sired by Secretariat and joined the Hartley Farming Partnership at Beamsley.

Mark Goodall, from Tong, Bradford, also paid joint top of £2,350 for Winton Crackshot Michelle from Peter Waring in Beverley.

She calved on May 12 and was already giving over 30kg.

From Green Hammerton, Jack and Alan Wilson continued their herd dispersal with a run of six in-calf cows and heifers.

Halifax show judge Guy Mallinson paid top price in this section for a big powerful cow coming with its second calf due late June to Sexed Adorable and by Overside Dragon.

She made £2,200 and with others at £1,800 and £1,750 the batch averaged £1,738 as repeat buyers showed confidence in the stock on offer and the value of cows and milk this summer.

The next Craven Dairy Auction is on Monday, June 6.