Page 92 - Britich Blue Year Book 2023

PEDIGREE FOCUS ON THE STONEBYRES HERD
REALISING THE TRUE VALUE OF BLUE
While the leading prices at Society sales grab the headlines, and everybody is happy if they can be among them, it
is the consistent returns from British Blue genetics which, for Blair and Shona Comrie, confirm they made the right
breed choice more than 20 years ago.
Their Stonebyres herd, in the Clyde Valley, is now well
known beyond Scotland, not least from sales of pedigree
bulls and females. The Comrie’s do regularly see the eight
or so bulls they sell each year in the higher end of the price
lists, but with also having a herd of around 50 Blue cross
commercial cows alongside their 30 pedigree females, it
is the breed’s influence on the value of everything they
sell which matters.
“We did achieve our highest ever price of 10,000gns in
this year’s breed society January sale in Carlisle. That was
for Stonebyres Samson by our own Stonebyres Ninja but
we also sell store cattle and show potentials out of the
suckler herd, and, like everyone else, cull cows. Just as an
exercise we calculated that every animal of all ages from
calves to cull cows sold off the farm in a rolling12 months,
had averaged £2,256, and that we believe, shows the real
value of the British Blue,” says Blair.
“That figure would include, for example, our 9 to 12 month
old stores in Lanark last year where our champion and
reserve champion made, respectively, £1,540 and the
sale’s top price of £2,100. But there is also tremendous
value in British Blue cast cows and earlier this year we had
four which averaged £2,875 from a top of £3,104.”
Stonebyres Mains farm runs to some 210 acres plus 50
acres summer grazing. It has been in Blair’s family since
1977 and was formerly a small dairy farm run by Blair’s
father and mother, along with Blair who also worked in the
family’s small sawmill up to the turn of the millennium.
When he took over the reins at Stonebyres and the dairy
herd had been dispersed, suckler cows bred out of the
dairy cows were the only livestock enterprise and Blair and
Shona were keen to improve conformation.
“In 2003 we bought our first Blue and that was a half share
with a neighbour in the 5,600gns Tamhorn Toronto which
we would run here for six months or so of the year. We
went for a Blue partly for temperament and we wanted to
breed our own commercial herd replacements, but two
years later we decided to establish a pedigree herd as well,
and we then bought Annanwater Venus for 3,200gns off
Andy Ryder. We still have that female line and, as we
flushed her, still have some embryos. The other female we
bought and which is represented in the back-pedigrees of
around 50 per cent of the herd, was Pendle Dotty from
Mark and Elaine Hartley. She only left us last year and we
had 24 calves out of her including flushes and also have
some embryos from her daughters. We wanted to
establish what is the British type, rather than the more
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Stonebyres Ninja in his new home at Coul Estates