Auctioneering masterclass

It is years since I attended a sale in which we were neither selling nor buying, so I thoroughly enjoyed my day at the Luing sale at Castle Douglas.

We do actually have a few Luing and Sim/Luing cows at Roxburgh Mains. They do their duties bearing and rearing embryo transfer calves well.

At Rawburn we always kept a few Highland cross Shorthorn cows, the ancestors of the Luing, which we called 'Kylies' on an area of enclosed hill land called Fosterside.

It had been a small farm at one time. The last inhabitants had reputedly been driven out by adders after losing livestock and a child. I certainly never saw any more adders there than anywhere else on the farm.

The original 'Kylies' were from the Outer Hebrides and wintered on weathered hay which nothing else would eat. My father reckoned they were the best paying cattle we had.

Their hairy calves made less at sale time, but they drew the same hill cow subsidy as the Angus cross Shorthorn cows on the better ground and they cost very little to keep.

The cross Highlanders rarely needed assistance at calving and hid their calves for a few days. Anyone too close to a young calf got a short shrift.

On one occasion, when the shepherd feeding them didn't appear for his lunch we found him up a tree with cows patrolling underneath, their needle sharp horns pointing skywards.

I found the cattle at the Luing sale impressive. There was more variation in the presentation of the bulls than would be found at breed sales which I normally attend, however the best had been fed and prepared just as well.

Unlike their ancestor, the Beef Shorthorn, red was the fashionable colour, or maybe it was just that the best ones were red.

I mostly managed to guess the prices that the bulls made except in one instance: a bull which both my son and I thought one of the best bulls on offer. Despite being well bred and beautifully presented, he never attracted a single bid.

The challenge that breeders face is to expand sales by finding an alternative niche for the bulls as a crossing sire. I suspect that, with their hardiness and weather proof coats, if they were crossed with a dairy heifer, the resulting female calves would make mighty good sucklers.

The heifers at Castle Douglas were attractive and unlike our old ladies at Rawburn seemed quiet natured. Like the bulls, they differed in type.

One sort were larger framed with slightly barer coats and the other kind were more like how I remember our old Kylies. I suspect that even these would be larger than ours were 50 years ago.

The preferred type would depend on the land they grazed, the rainfall and the availability of winter keep. The Cadzow Brothers would undoubtedly be proud were they around to see how their creation has evolved, though no doubt a little sad to see so much of Scotland's hill land, so perfect for the Luing, empty of stock of any kind.

At the most recent meeting of our Beef Cattle Group, run by SAC, the issue of cow size came up as it often does. Indeed, cow size has been a topic of controversy since I was a boy. It must be the most obvious and measurable example of pendulum genetics. Breed them too small! Go hell for leather for size! Forget to stop until they are too big! Then spend the rest of your life reducing them back to where they were in your youth!

The reducing size lobby seems to be grabbing the media at the moment.

What should not be forgotten is the high correlation between mature size and growth. Some see the definition of a successful suckler cow as one which rears 50% of her body weight.

So much of this depends on milk. Even in the old days, we had cows that could do that but then the calf never grew on thereafter. By calving at two, mature size can be controlled up to when the cow is around five. The annual culling rate in the nation's suckler herd is 19.2% so, on average a cow will rear two calves when she is mature.

The extra maintenance cost will probably be recouped at termination by selling a bigger rather than a smaller cow and her calves, with their enhanced growth potential, will be a desired beast at sale time.

At present the average age of heifers calving for the first time is 33 months. It never fails to amaze me how the debate about age at first calving rumbles on.

We have successfully calved at 24 months with pure and cross bred cows in both, an upland and a low ground situation for 40 years. The only possible disadvantage is that the first calvers need more feed to enable them to come bulling on time. Everything else is positive.

Robin Anderson's selling at Castle Douglas in what was a sticky trade was superb. When a vendor attempted to intervene during a spirited bidding dual, without breaking rhythm, he said:

"We'll talk later". After the bull was knocked down at good money, he asked to smiles all round: "What was it you wanted to say?"

I just loved it! So often vendors, mostly the same ones, hold up the bidding bleating that "they're looking for more". The important information should be in the catalogue or intimated before the bidding starts.

Likewise, buyers who, as a tactic, leave the auctioneer hanging on and on then bidding at the last second should be left losing the beast. We all want maximum reward, but nothing kills the trade more than deliberately slowing the bidding.

Those South West auctioneers must have been taught in a good school. Although it is 40 years since I last heard them, I remember Mike Craig, his delivery brusquer and Tom Robertson, whose easy style I could have listened to all day, giving a masterclass in selling Blackie tups at Newton Stewart.

Butchers pen, or record breaker, the sheep were hardly in the ring when, after a couple of spins round, they were thrown out by a sweat lashed fellow of the Herculean stamina.

No preamble, buyers found out what they needed to know beforehand. Hesitate bidding and you lost him.

The sale flew, a hundred tups an hour - and we always paid more than we meant to!