National Show

C ongratulations to Trevor

Brown on winning the Su-

preme Inter Breed Beef Cham-

pionship at East of England Show

with his heifer Grafton Lovely Dream.

This is the second year running that

Beef shorthorns have won the Su-

preme Inter breed Beef award at the

East of England. Judge Willie

McLaren presents the trophy for the

supreme inter breed beef Champion.

BEEF SHORTHORN SOCIETY — www.shorthorn.co.uk

BEEF SHORTHORN SOCIETY —

Office

Stirling Dinner and Suckler Herd of the Year Presentation

W e will be holding an evening dinner and social event at the Barcelo Stirling High-

land Hotel, Stirling on Sunday 21st October at 7.00pm for 7.30pm where we will be

announcing the winner of the Morrisons Beef Shorthorn Suckler Herd of the year

competition. We have had 11 entries for this year for this competition and the judges, Ian

Pritchard and Mark Holmes have been shortlisting the finalists who they will visit during Sep-

tember before making their decision. Tickets for the dinner are £25.00 each. Please book your

meal with the Beef Shorthorn Office by Monday 15th October. Accommodation should be

booked directly with the hotel. Many of you said how much you liked the Barcelo Stirling

Highland Hotel in February so we are returning there again. The only problem we encountered

last time was the variable rates charged by the hotel which clearly was not acceptable for a

group booking. I have copied below the rates and booking details for October as given to me by

the manager. I suggest you quote the rates below and that you are with the Beef Shorthorn

Society when making the reservation. E-mail is probably the best way to make your reserva-

tion and the Hotel will send back confirmation. If you choose to call and the number diverts

you to the Central Reservation Office there should not be a problem with the allocation. These

rates are live now so you can book any time you wish. The manager has guaranteed that no

lower rates will be available for that weekend.

The Function suite on Sunday 21st October has also been reserved for our private dinner.

Dates:

Saturday 20th, Sunday 21st and Monday 22nd October.

Single occupancy room - £75 to include full Scottish breakfast

Double occupancy room - £85 to include full Scottish breakfast

Tel No. 01786 272725 Kim

e-mail: stirling.reservations@barcelo-hotels.co.uk

C rowded ringsides have become a feature

of Shorthorn shows in recent years as

the standard and numbers of cattle on

parade have increased and more interested

onlookers view our cattle.

It is vitally important that we maximise these

opportunities to promote the unique selling

points of our breed to potential customers.

Shorthorns are renowned for outstanding ma-

ternal characteristics of fertility, functional

efficiency and milkiness. These traits can only

be demonstrated by females with calves at

foot.

Showring incentive for calved

heifers.

The Society directors would like to en

courage judges to reward productive

females by taking calves into account

when placing classes and breeders to

promote the fertility of their cattle by

presenting more young females in milk.

As an additional incentive for showing

calved heifers at the Royal Highland,

Great Yorkshire and East of England-

shows the Society Directors have de-

cided to offer an additional £50 in the

two year old heifer classes to the high-

est placed heifer shown with her calf

at foot.

W e are sad to report that Caroline left the

office at the end of August. She is emi-

grating to Zambia where her husband

Jason has been offered the job of setting up a farm

for his employers Agco. The good news is that they

are hoping to start a herd of pedigree Beef Short-

horns with embryos from the UK. We wish them

luck in their new venture

and thanks to Caroline for

all her hard work for the

Society over the last 3½

years. We are very pleased

to welcome Sandra Daly to

take over from Caroline.

Sandra will be responsible

for beef registrations among

other things and I am sure

many of you will be speaking

to Sandra in the near future.

SEPTEMBER

NEWSLETTER

2012

Scanning

T he number of Beef Shorthorns which are per-

formance recorded has increased dramatically

over the last few years and this benefits eve-

ryone in the breed as more and more animals have

performance figures and the reliabil-

ity of all the figures increases as the

number of recorded animals in-

creases. Almost 50% of all Beef Short-

horn calves born in 2010 have been

performance recorded, and this figure

is increasing yearly. The Directors

decided some time ago that animals

which had not been performance re-

corded would not receive an index so

from January 1st 2013 animals which

have not been scanned will not receive

a headboard at Society sales, so if you

are not already recording and scan-

ning please contact Barbara Webster

at Pedigree Cattle Services on

01738622478 for information on how

to start recording.

List of Events

October 9th – Bristol Sale

October 22nd – Perth Bull Sales – Stirling

October 27th – Bristol calf show

November 2nd - Agri Expo – Carlisle – calf show

November 7th – Skipton sale

November 8th – S W Beef Event

November 10th – Chelford sale

November 17th – Forfar calf show

will also have their advert reproduced on the

website for the following 12 months. The cost

of an advert on the website but not in the

journal will be £100 per year.

Calf Shows

New Fee Structure

T he new fee structure came in to operation on July 1st 2012. Remember that male

calves over 12 months of age cannot now be registered so make sure your

registrations are up to date to avoid any disappointment.

A reminder of the new fees is as follows:

All Calf registrations received up to 4 months after the calf’s date of birth £25

All Calf registrations received between 4 and 12 months after the calf’s date of birth £50

Registrations of FEMALE animals over 12 months of age £100

No male registrations accepted for animals over 12 months of age

Transfer of ownership £25

Annual Membership subscription £30

Associate Membership subscription £15

Herd Prefix registration £30

M orrisons is pleased to be promot-

ing Beef Shorthorn and Native

Breed store sales this autumn.

The success of last autumn’s sales looks

likely to be repeated with record numbers

already entered for the September sales,

so if you have Beef Shorthorn sired stores

for sale the following native breed store

sales will be a good place to sell them. Fin-

ishers who supply Morrisons native breed

beef scheme will be at these sales looking

for good quality native bred stores.

Stirling Caledonian 10th September

Dingwall 26th September

Thainstone 9th October

Castle Douglas 6th October

Carlisle 12th September

Skipton 10th October

Ludlow 12th October

Thame 19th October

Thrapston (pending)

Exeter (pending)

The list of calf shows for 2012 is as follows:

November 2nd Borderway Calf Show,

October 27th Bristol Calf Show

November 17th Forfar Calf Show

December 1st East of England, Smithfield

A ll information for the journal must

be in the office by Friday 26th Oc-

tober. Please try and submit ad-

verts, show reports, judges reports, articles

etc as early as possible and not on the clos-

ing date. We can begin formatting articles,

reports etc. as soon as they are submitted

which saves time later on when the pres-

sure to produce two journals (beef and

dairy) in a short period of time is immense.

The advertising rates have again been held

at the very reasonable rate of £125 per

page, £90 per half page and £90 per thumb

strip. These rates are considerably less

than most other breed Societies charge and

are offered as an incentive and an opportu-

nity to members to advertise their cattle.

All members taking out a full or half page

advert will be included in the breeders di-

rectory map at the end of the journal and

T his year we have several calf shows

throughout the Country which we

as a Society are supporting and

which are being sponsored by Morrisons.

The calf shows will also be holding young

handlers classes. This is a great way to get

our youngsters interested and to give them

some experience of preparing and showing

cattle. If you know of any young people

who may be interested please encourage

them to enter.

The young handlers class at the Carlisle

Calf Show has been designated as a quali-

fying show for the young handlers champi-

onship at East of England Smithfield, so

the champion Beef Shorthorn young han-

dler at Carlisle will qualify to represent

the Beef Shorthorn Society at Smithfield

and the Beef Shorthorn Society will pro-

vide travel sponsorship of £200 to the suc-

cessful young handler to help in their

travel costs to the Smithfield festival. In

order to qualify for the sponsorship the

young handler will have to be a junior

member of the Beef shorthorn Society and

will be required to show a Beef Shorthorn

calf at the event.

Herd Regulations for Society Sales

W hilst on the subject of sales, don’t forget

that only animals from herds that are

members of a CheCs recognized health

scheme which have been testing for BVD and

Johnes for a minimum of 12 months will be ac-

cepted for sales at Stirling from January 1st 2013

and for all Society sales from January 2014. So if

you are not already a member of a recog-

nized health scheme you need to be sign-

ing up now if you want to sell animals

from 2014 onwards.

D on’t forget the new Society Sale at

Bristol on October 9th. If you have

cattle to sell please support this

new venture. We have not had a Society

Sale in the South of the Country for many

years and this will only be able to continue

if members support it, so if you want a sale

in the South make sure you send your

entries in for the Bristol sale.

Sales

Autumn Store Sales

Journal

W e will again feature the Breeders’

Directory which has been a very

successful addition to the journal.

Last year 60 members put their herds “on the

map.” The Directory is also included on the

website. This directory is the first place new

members look to see where their nearest Beef

Shorthorn breeders are. If you are not taking

out an advert in the journal but still want to

be included in the breeders’ directory please

fill in the application form included with this

newsletter and return to the office together

with a cheque for £36.00p before October

19th 2012. The Breeders’ Directory entries

will be standardised to contain the contact

details of the herd owners.

Breeders Directory 2013

BCMS Passports

P lease ensure that the sire’s eartag

number is included on all passports.

This information will be essential in

future to ensure the integrity of the Morri-

sons native breed beef scheme.

Registrations

C aroline and Sandra have been work-

ing very hard to clear the backlog of

registrations which are now almost

up to date. There are still some queries

pending which we are now working through.

Please help to avoid delays by submitting

hair samples with the registrations. Keeping

registrations in pending files is very time

consuming and expensive.

Registrations must be submitted on the cor-

rect forms or preferably on line. We cannot

accept registrations over the phone