A MART’S annual Rare & Native Stock Breeders Auctions of rare, minority and traditional sheep breeds attracted another large and varied entry.

The championship at Skipton Auction Mart fell to a Greyface Dartmoor two-crop ewe from local husband and wife breeders, Tom and Sophie Holgate, of Cowhill Farm, Halton West.

The victor, picked out by Wigglesworth show judge Jack Foster, and bought out of Skipton as a gimmer lamb, was bred by the Booth family’s Norbury flock in Cheshire and has now produced two sets of lambs, both twins, for the Holgates, who have been breeding Greyface Dartmoors for some five years alongside their established cattle and sheep holdings. The title winner sold for 280gns to L Burgess, of Newton in Derwent in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Another local breeder, Silsden’s Janet Keefe, stood reserve champion with an April, 2021, Herdwick female, out of a home-bred dam by a tup from well-known Cumbrian breeders Ian and Angela Grisedale’s Swinside flock in Crooklands, Kendal, multiple past champions at the Skipton highlight. The overall runner-up sold for 150gns to Roger Hebdon in Thirsk.

Topping the sale at 355gns was a young Coloured Ryeland male from AndrewWood, of Bacup. Named Nene Cassius and born in February this year, the twin son of Snelson Zidann, last year’s reserve male champion, joined L Tattersall in Darwen.

Also on the same day’s agenda was the annual show and sale of goats, when Joanne Webster, travelling north from Southam in Warwickshire for what her first-ever appearance at the North Yorkshire venue, made the long journey well worthwhile when standing champion with a home-bred Boer nanny by a six-year-old red Boer buck that was also one of a large consignment all successfully sold to a top of 260gns for a buck and 130gns for a nanny.

The reserve champion, a Boer billy from Mr and Mrs A Key, of Eccleshall in Staffordshire, made 340gns, with the sale toped at 430gns by a four-year-old Boer billy from D Mitchell, of Hyde, Greater Manchester, selling locally to Lothersdale’s WA Brown.