Page 96 - British Blue Yearbook 2023

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One of the turning points in the farm’s plans, was when they bought Solway View Odin, a British Blue bull, for 27,000gns last year at Carlisle. Mr MacDiarmid said: “I chose him at the mart but my boss, Kevin, did the bidding. It told him we would get it for around £15,000 but it ended up costing a lot more.”
On the same day Mr MacDiarmid bought a heifer Olga from the Dragon Blue herd in Wales for 2300gns with the quiet animal calving naturally the following spring. The animal’s nature inspired Mr and Mrs Fletcher to go down the pedigree route and they went on to purchase five heifers in May in Carlisle. Two from the Solway View herd in Dumfries, which included the overall show champion. One from Jean MacKay, Harelaw, one from Gail Ellis, Trencrom in Devon and one from Iain MacInnes in Tiree.
This summer team went to a few local shows with two heifers Solway View Pixie and Harelaw Poppy. They won reserve breed champion at Turriff, any other breed champion at Black Isle and Reserve overall at Grantown.
Next year the team are planning on taking the cattle to the Highland, Yorkshire and Welsh shows as well as on the Northern show circuit. If all goes to plan, they will take a heifer, bull and cow with a calf on their newly bought show
lorry. The Bull Solway View Odin has already been ear marked for showing next year and will be coming inside in October to be ready for the show ring in June.
Buyers can look out for Coul pedigree cattle at Thainstone’s Spring Show and the British Blue sales at Carlisle.
The pedigree herd are wintered in a bedded court and on home-made silage and draff. The farm grows 80 acres of silage in one cut as well as 20 to 30 acres of fodder crop grown each year. This is then sown with an arable silage which is under sown with grass to establish a new sward. The fodder crops are a stubble turnip and kale grazed off from December. The mix is planted into the old grass lays which are ploughed and cultivated field with 125kg of fertiliser. Once of the first things they did was to erect five miles of deer fences to stop them coming in.
“The neeps and kale are a good feed for the stock, but they also provide cover for the game birds which we raise for the shooting,” explained Mr MacDiarmid.
Looking ahead Mr MacDiarmid’s priorities is to establish the Bluegrass system and produce a quality sought after in-calf heifer and sell a few pure bulls the down the line.
By Kind Permission of John Sleigh (Newsquest)