Watch Out For The Elderberry Herd

Chris Berry talks Limousins with the Blenkhorns of Willitoft

“We just want to breed as well as we possibly can.” The close-knit Blenkhorn family aren’t talking about their own future human generations here but that of their cattle. Husband and wife Paul and Sue farm 350 acres in partnership with their two sons Barry and Neil at Elder Farm, Willitoft in the East Riding and it is their Limousin herd that they are currently talking about with both pride and expectation. Paul tells me how the pedigree herd has come about:

“We had a few pedigree Limmies when my father (Eric) was alive. We ran them as commercials and ran 60-70 cows in the 80s, but when BSE came in we started to keep our own replacements rather than buying from the dairy side because we were worried about bringing disease on to the farm. We ran a Limmie bull and eventually found that we were getting nearer and nearer pure so we decided to phase out the commercial herd in 2002 and go full pedigree. Now we have about 40 cows and a bull.”

Neil expresses their initial concerns about going down the pedigree route. “We were aware of a possible reputation amongst the heifers over milking ability and temperament but the closer we got to pedigree we realised that we were dealing with much better quality and started achieving better prices at market. We had started out quite modestly buying at commercial prices but as our knowledge and enthusiasm for them grew we realised we had to buy even better quality.”

As with many families before them the breeding bug has become a healthy obsession, something that the whole family enjoys with Barry now even having taken up the position of vice chairman of the North East Limousin Breeders Club. “We just decided that trying to breed at the very top end was what we wanted to do, to try and buy the right cattle. I think it’s just something inside us that we all really want. Our only problem has been financing it because we’ve had to find monies from our farming income as we have no other. That’s sometimes difficult because we’re often competing at trying to buy the best stock with others who are able to treat it more as a hobby.”

Nonetheless, the Blenkhorns did buy at what was the top price at Newark when they paid 8000 guineas for Millington Carly. “We saw her pedigree first on paper and then went to see her on farm and we were immediately taken with her. She comes from a wonderful line which includes Samy who won at the Royal Show, and her mother Sarkley Nellie has been a champion in the ring as well,” says Neil.

But that doesn’t mean they have caught the showing bug just yet. “The Summer shows are difficult because we also run a haylage business and of course that’s our busy time harvest-wise. So we’ve not done much showing at all. But we really don’t want to show what we’ve bought. We’d rather show what we have bred ourselves. We’re currently trying to build our herd all from within what we have. We’re trying to achieve a really high health status producing milky, quiet heifers who are perfect for the job and I think we’re doing okay.”

The ET route is one that the Blenkhorns are finding particularly successful just at the moment, as Paul points out. “Although we keep our own bull which we bought from Ireland last year, paying the highest price last March, and have some nice calves coming through, we have recently started on ET work and in the first flush we got three calves from three embryos. We have people like Jonathan Statham at Bishopton Vets, Roddy Graham at Vermuyden Vets and Adrian Johnson at North Yorkshire AI to thank for all of that.”

The haylage operation is the mainstay of the Blenkhorns farming business having taken over from cereals in 2002 and they now have over 100 regular customers from as far afield as Scarborough, Bradford and Hull. They wrap different sizes of bales and most years they produce around 12-13,000 small bales which they sell to individuals as well as the retail equine market with Paul as the lorry driver, Neil providing the power at the other end and Sue looking after everything from the customers to a mountain of paperwork. They also grow Lucerne which they were told would not grow this far north. They tried a two and a half acre field with it nine years ago and now grow 30 acres, utilising it mainly for cattle feed.

“It is high in protein and so we feed it after the cows have calved, because before that it is too rich for them. We round bale it and they have it until they are turned out,” explains Paul. This year the Blenkhorns have moved back into cereals and will harvest 100 acres of wheat and barley. They’re hoping that the better prices will maintain their form and it is a safe bet that anything they make on their crops will go in a certain direction - to increase yet again the quality of their Elderberry Limousins herd. It looks like other breeders should watch out in years to come because the Blenkhorns are now a serious Limousin cattle breeding family.

For more information please call 01757 288 218