Frome Sale

[Jo Kemp]

Top price was £530 for the Breed Champion - a smart heifer and the cow plus calf went for £500.
The other prices were pretty depressing - one in calf cow made only £196 but most werer about £200-£300 If my memory serves me.
Prices for bulls were low
Quality - if I could have bid, (living in Scotland meant I couldn't!) I would have been tempted by the two top prices animals and if I had wanted good, solid cattle to breed meat from, there were quite a few possibles which needed just a bit of good grass to put some condition on them.
Bulls - the Reserve Champion was a straight animal but his hindquarters were a bit light for me - I look for as much meat on the beam end as possible as soon as possible!
Sorry not more detail
Jo

[Mark Bowles]

Reading between the lines of the comments it sounds like the quality of cattle forward was very average. Were there plenty of buyers there but not willing to bid for the said cattle.
I got the impression that the breeders in the south west were wanting a sale more in their area, is there any hope for better support next year.Did anyone from the area attend, let us know your thoughts.
Mark

[groubearfarm]

There were quite a number of people at the Frome sale from the South West, although it was more difficult to reach than the orginal venue, Bristol. The Devon and Wessex groups ran a stand there fore the duration of the show but because the show and sale were both on Saturday there were very few dexter people about on the Friday. Because the cattle forward were largely from a dispersal sale the prices reached did not perhaps give a true indication of cattle values in the South West, although there were other cattle breeds at the sale which were not reaching their reserves.
It was an interesting show and sale with lessons in organisation to be learnt, and hopefully an event that will grow in popularity in the future.
Fiona Miles