Cheshire Ayrshire Breeders Club - Winter 2010

Our Herd Visit this year was to Peter Berresford's, Dale Head Farm, Tideswell.  We could not have had a better day, as we travelled over the Peak District in brilliant sunshine to Peter’s farm.  We saw a tremendous herd of cows, with many fine individuals especially his latest show cow. Thanks to Peter and family for showing us around and for their hospitality.

The Club held an open meeting on the 25th of October, in the cafe at Beeston Market, on the eve of the annual coloured breeds show and sale. An audience of club members and interested local farmers were treated to two excellent presentations from Edward Evans and Stuart Williams, who had travelled up from Pembrokeshire to judge the show the following day.

Edward gave a brief outline of the breed and some insight into the running of the Society. He went on to explain the role of Cattle Services and how its success has benefited the Society. He talked about the crossing market and how popular the Ayrshire has become especially for commercial dairymen on grazing based systems, and he indentified the Irish Republic as a potential area for growth in semen sales. He also reiterated the choice of bulls available from CSA, with semen from an incredible 80 different sires being sold in the last 12 months!

Stuart Williams gave an extremely professional presentation on his family's Wilhome Herd. Ayrshires were only introduced in 1999, to run along with the existing black and whites. Since then numbers have steadily increased and the Ayrshire portion of the  herd has rapidly come to prominence within the breed. Shrewd selection of foundation stock and a carefully structured breeding programme has led to a great deal of success in the parlour and in the showring. Stuart gained a Degree from Harper Adams, and for his dissertation he compared the economic performance between the Ayrshire and Holstein sections of his herd, with the Ayrshires coming out on top for bottom line profit.

After a question and answer session a light buffet super was served, and attendees had a chance to judge a class of six photographs of Ayrshire cows in milk, closest to Master Judge Stuart Williams was well known Clipaholic,Wendy Young, just ahead of Mike Norbury.

The Club would like to record its thanks to Wright-Manley for allowing us the use of the room, and especially to Stuart Hassall for organising the photo competition.