Old hands and new beginners come together for North of England YDP workshop

After the disappointing numbers forward last year for the North of England workshop, many people worked hard to get more participants for 2010. On paper it looked great, but sadly young people have hectic schedules these days and we ended up with only a third of them actually attending.

But a smaller number means more attention for those that came along and we had a really great bunch of keen young people there.

The workshop was held at Tree Bridge Farm, near Middlesbrough, by kind permission of David and Penny Evans. They had got some excellent trainers on board and they made sure there was sufficient halter broken cattle. After doing such a good job last year, we welcomed back Eileen Wilson and Duncan McLaren. Eileen is well known for her British Blue and prime stock cattle and Duncan comes from the Netherton dynasty and is now back working with Angus in Yorkshire.

The participants were a mixture of experienced showers and complete novices which can sometimes be difficult but the older ones looked out for the younger ones and helped them throughout the day. We started off with David giving a brief chat about how he halter breaks his cattle; this was to give the newcomers an idea of how to get started in showing. This led onto learning the quick release knot, those that could do it showed those that couldn’t and several different ways were learnt by all.

While we were gathered in the yard we had a really interesting talk about health by Ben Strugnell from the VLA Centre, Thirsk. It is a really complicated subject but Ben managed to hit just the right level for all the participants and the adults present entered into some really good discussions.

The participants then went onto washing the cattle. For those that do it regularly it may seem simple but for the newcomers it is a great way to build their confidence with the cattle, particlarly when using buckets and brushes. As some moaned about having to use hard work and elbow grease it was interesting to hear that Eileen never uses a pressure washer.

The blowing came next and one young lady gave me a few more grey hairs as she blew the heifer right down to its feet. Luckily, Duncan wasn’t fazed by this.

We had lunch on the lawn and were treated to some great entertainment provided by three Jack Russell terriers. It is surprising what lengths dogs will go to to get a hula hoop, especially when aided by young lads!

While everyone was sat on the lawn Duncan gave a demonstration of how to make a halter. I’m not sure this demo helped anyone when it actually came to making one themselves though as it really is complicated. The attendees split into two groups and some made halters and the others were treated to a clipping seminar by Eileen. She was great at explaining the shape of a beef animal and the points to accentuate and those to hide.

The more experience participants got to clip some cattle themselves under the expert eye of Eileen and the not so experienced ones were helped by David to have a go at clipping heads. It was then change around time and one young person turned out to be a complete natural when it came to making halters. Sadly as per usual I didn’t get to make one myself but did manage to get one back through airport security in my hand luggage.

The youngsters then got to dress the cattle for the show ring using various different products found in Eileen and David’s show boxes and they all came out shining and some of them nearly worn away with the amount of enthusiasm put in. Everyone got the chance to take an animal out for the ring craft demo. The heifers did come in varying degrees of difficulty and everyone did really well including the ones that weren’t even big enough to look over the cattle.

The day ended with a bit of a quiz, Farmway Feeds had provided some feed samples and the youngsters had to guess what they were, a great discussion took place as everyone had a sniff and feel of the various raw samples and David and Duncan explained what they fed their own cattle with.

Those that made it to the workshop enjoyed a fabulous day with lots of hands on experience and the YDP is very grateful to David and Penny Evans, Eileen Wilson, Duncan McLaren and Ben Strugnell for all their efforts.

I keep saying that you can always learn something no matter what your age and that goes for me too. I used a tip that I had picked up at Netherton last week when showing my own cattle and I have to say it worked a treat. Next workshop is on home territory for me in Devon, the weather forecast looks good and perhaps this time I might be able to make a halter myself.