New chairman of the British Charolais Cattle Society, is Northumberland breeder, Chris Curry who farms at Low Burradon, Thropton.

Chris began breeding Charolais in 1989 when he purchased Northfield Brigitte – great grand-mother of Burradon Talisman – at the Christmas cracker sale with his Burradon herd now registering 40 Charolais calves a year.

Chris and his wife Helen also manage a 200-strong commercial ewe flock, 1600 laying Gressingham ducks and 140 acres of his 350-acre holding is taken up with arable producing wheat and barley.

Mr Curry also works as funeral director and the family company has eight offices which cover the Northumberland region conducting 750 to 800 funerals per year.

Looking forward to leading the society over the next two years he said: “The industry as whole is facing massive challenges but I have confidence that the Charolais breed is the one that will always do the business when margins are under pressure. A Charolais will outperform other breeds in any system and breeders have made great strides in recent years to provide the bulls that beef producers are wanting, the calving ease EBV for the breed has improved by 0.8% since 2007 when we introduced the Breedplan genetic evaluation system whilst performance has also continued to improve with 200 day and 400 day growth rates up by 4.0kgs and 8.0kgs respectively. Processors have tightened up the spec of the cattle that they are looking for and Charolais bred cattle can hit that spec quicker than any other breed.”

New vice chairman is Ben Harman from Buckinghamshire, who has grown up with Charolais cattle and took over the running of his grandfather’s Chesham herd in 1993.