Page 31 - Britich Blue Year Book 2023

www.britishbluecattle.org 29
CUMBRIA’S JOE
PATTINSON WINS
INGLEWOOD EDGE
TROPHY
Eighteen year old Joe Pattinson is this year’s winner of the
prestigious Inglewood Edge Trophy for the breed society’s Young
Stockperson of the Year.
Joe actually is, very much a stockperson, whether it be with
his involvement in the family’s Kelowna herd of British
Blues, their 75 head commercial dairy herd, his own
comparatively new British Blue herd, relief milking on
another nearby dairy farm, or lambing around north
Cumbria in the spring. And that is all on top of part-time
work for a contracting firm.
After Joe’s father Steve - also a busy man as a non-
executive director of the H&H Group – gave Joe a heifer
calf for Christmas some years ago, Joe established his own
British Blue prefix, Kinkry Hill, which is the name of the
family farm at Roadhead, Carlisle.
This late 2015 born foundation cow is Kinkry Hill Kitkat,
by Kersey Geronimo out of Kelowna Fennel and like a
proportion of the Kelowna cows, is being flushed as part
of the Cogent Beef Breeding programme to source
predominantly white, easy calving bulls for dairy
inseminations.
Steve and wife Claire, a past regional secretary of the
Border British Blue Club for 30 years, had begun using
Blue semen on their dairy cows in the 1980s, and that
sparked their enthusiasm for establishing a pedigree herd
later in 1996, an enthusiasm which Joe has inherited.
Says Joe: “I have always been involved and have always
admired the breed and the good commercial calves it can
produce for dairy farmers. My cows run with the main
pedigree Blue herd. They graze in summer and are cubicle
housed in winter, while heifers are on straw. The aim is to
inseminate Blue heifers at 22 months old provided they
are big enough and we rely on Boomer Birch, Beef
Programme Manager at Cogent and Rachel Dale, Beef
Product Specialist, to match the matings which they can
do much better than we could. I enjoy working closely with
them and now, there is also a focus on introducing the
polled gene into the breed. I can do our own
inseminations and I also work with our nutritionist as I
want to see our Blues capable of growing in stature before
putting on the muscle.
“I don’t push the young Blues at all but they are all
vaccinated and tested for all the common disease risks and
any young bulls destined for Cogent are halter trained
while we are training the heifers, but for us, halter training
is not for showing. It’s a closed herd so we can’t.
“We also use Blue semen on most of the dairy herd apart
from those from which we want replacement heifers, and
for them, it is sexed Friesian. But now, with sexed male
Blue semen technology a reality, that has been a game
changer for the pedigree Blue herd and dairy farmers, but
of course I want to use some conventional for replacement
heifers. Any black bulls we get can be readily sold in to
commercial suckler herds. Some of our dairy cows at
Kinkry Hill are also used a recipients for Blue embyros.”
Bulls selected for the Cogent programme normally leave
the farm at about 12 months old and are then tested and
subsequently laid off for a while. A large number of the
Pattinsons’ young bulls have been selected for the
programme to date, but this season alone there have been
11, which is their best tally so far.
Among the Kelowna bulls already being sold by Cogent
are Mojo, which has sold more than 70,000 straws and
now with Kelowna breeding, is CBL Plasma, which is out
of Kelowna Kelly, and is currently the company’s number
one Blue bull.