This is a subscriber-only article
On-farm sales for traditional bull breeds have been on fire in counties with high numbers of dairy stock.
This demand is resulting in many society and club sales seeing half the number of bulls actually presented for sale compared to what’s catalogued.
This was evident at the first of the Irish Hereford Breed Society’s Nenagh sales on Saturday. A total of 19 bulls were offered for sale from the initial 32 catalogued.
While generally a lower number would result in a higher clearance rate, this wasn’t case here, as along with bulls being scarce, so too were buyers. This resulted in only seven bulls finding new homes on the day. The average price was €2,871.
Local breeder
The highest seller was Ballinalick Murty, which sold for €3,400 from local breeder William Duff, Nenagh, Co Tipperary. Homebred on both sides of the pedigree, Murty is a son of Ballinalick Gold and Ballinalick Maeve.
A further two bulls hit the €3,000 mark. First of these was Ardmulchan Riddick from Philip and Catherine Smyth, Navan, Co Meath. This August 2019-born bull is out of UK-imported stock bull Church Preen Galileo and the homebred Ardmuclchan Clover 500.
Matching the price tag was fellow Meath breeder John Canty with his bull Portanob Gerry. Sired by stock bull Cill Cormaic Leo, he is out of a Balleen Revival-bred dam.
Irish Hereford Prime again paid €200 each to the buyers of the five top-priced bulls. This incentive is in place for a number of other Hereford society sales over the next month.
SHARING OPTIONS: