Our young Longhorn bull wins a prize

When Cheshire Wildlife Trust embarked on its Conservation Grazing Project one of its aims was to raise the profile of the use of grazing animals to benefit biodiversity. This has been achieved in several ways to date including guided walks and talks, interaction with Corporate volunteers carrying out projects related specifically to grazing animals, such as fencing, and through contact with Reaseheath College students using our animals to understand handling as well as their attributes. The most recent profile-raising event has been to take a young Longhorn bull to the royal Welsh show and enter him in the Longhorn class.

The pedigree name of our bull is Gowy Hemp, but he is generally known as Sammy, and at the time of the show was only 15 months old. He was picked out at an early age as a good example of the breed and from then on was handled regularly. Richard Owen (Conservation Grazing Officer) and Rob Roberts (Reserves Officer) spent time teaching Sammy to walk on a halter and exposing him to large groups of people, machinery and noise. At one point the shed in which he was housed had balloons and kites flying around it to ensure that once he got to the show nothing would frighten him. Richard’s son Tim agreed to show him and accompanied Sammy to the Royal Welsh. We are proud to report that not only did he behave himself but he won a third and received a special reserve because the judge believes he will be a very good show animal when he is a little older.

Our thanks go to Tim Owen for his hard work and willingness to take a young inexperienced animal to the show.