SKIPTON Auction Mart’s second annual gimmer shearlings show and sale produced an overall all-breeds selling average of £165.89 for 1,477 head, penned as part of the fortnightly sale of 2,075 sheep, compared to the £174.14 average achieved at the seasonal opener a fortnight earlier. (Tues, Sept 13)

Ribble Valley exhibitors won both show classes for pens of ten. Notching up a notable hat-trick of consecutive annual victories with their North of England Mules shearlings were Thomas and Sheila Binns, of Hecklin Farm, Downham, all again purchased as gimmer lambs at the previous year’s NEMSA sales, including Skipton.

All returned having successfully bred lambs, the red rosette winners selling for top call of £230 per head, the third prize pen from the same home making £220, another pen £200. Finishing runner-up again for the third year running was David Pighills, who trades as JE Thwaite in Barden, with a selling price of £215, another pen away at £200. Mules averaged £167.

The Continentals show class fell to 2020 victors and last year’s runners-up, David and Susan Pinder, and daughter, Sally, of Hill House Farm, Newton-in-Bowland, with home-bred Cheviot-x-Texel shearlings, some by Skipton-bought tups. The Pinders, who run a flock of 500 breeding ewes, saw their red rosette winners sell for £190 each, the third prize pen from the same home making £188.

The runners-up from show regulars and multiple past winners, Lambert and Joy Coverdale and their son, also Lambert, from Crimple Meadow Farm, Beckwithshaw, made £210, the family selling a total of four pens of Cheviot-cross and Texel-cross shearlings at £200-plus to a top of £232. Texel shearlings averaged £163.

Show classes, sponsored by British Wool, were judged by Wiswell’s Ian Lancaster, with the sale again including breeding ewes and Charollais rams.

Continental and Suffolk ewes were in sharp demand, young Texel Cheviot-x types again from the Pinders hitting £190, the Binns family returning to level out at £200 for young Texel/Mule ewes. Suffolks topped at £188 from and Alison North in Giggleswick, who also sold Texel-x shearlings at £200.

The sale commenced with a good enquiry for pedigree Charollais rams, seeing shearlings from Charles and Valerie Marwood’s Foulrice flock in Whenby, York, sell to a top of 500gns, with others at 450gns 420gns 400gns. Their daughter, Deborah Whitcher, who runs the Galtres flock in Skewsby, also secured 350gns and 350gns sales. Shearling rams averaged £469 and ram lambs £390.