By using a Simmental bull on their dairy herd to produce strong, sellable store cattle, the Ladds family at Benson Hall Farm, Kendal, Cumbria have developed a low input, high output system that works well within their busy farming enterprise.

Brothers Richard and Chris Ladds, work alongside their wives Beth and Brooke and parents Andrew and Cath. In all, the Ladds milk 180 Holsteins and 22 pedigree Jerseys, with 800 breeding ewes (North of England Mules) and 40 pedigree Texels. They also run a contracting business and a caravan site. Within the Holstein herd, sexed semen is used on the heifers and young cows to breed replacement heifers, with an Angus bull used to sweep up the heifers. For the past four years, they have been using a Simmental bull to sweep up the young cows and on the older cows.

One of the main advantages the Ladds have found is being able to sell the calves two months quicker than previously. They are sold as strong stores at 22-months, through Lancaster Mart, to a high demand. The 2021 batch of stores averaged £1,380.

Richard adds: “Our steers sell to a regular buyer, who has noted that the Simmental crosses go on and do well for him. There’s a good demand for the heifers through the ring, with some of them being bought as breeding heifers. We also bulled a few heifers this year and sold them as cow and calf outfits, so we have a lot more versatility with the Simmentals too.

“We’ve found it worthwhile buying a decent bull, as it definitely helps to sell the heifer calves – a lot of buyers do take note of the sire.”

The current bull is Denizes Kodak, sired by the Dinton Nautical son, Denizes Hamish, which is in the breed’s top 1% for calving ease.

“In our experience of using Simmental bulls, the breed does what it says it’s going to do. They are versatile and easily calved and the calves go on and do well,” adds Richard.

Simmentals have been kept at Littlewood Hall Farm in Lancashire since the 1980s, but a shift in focus and a change of breeding philosophy twelve years ago, has resulted in a huge amount of success within the breed for the Barlow family in recent years. In fact, 2022 saw them achieve their top price to-date when Denizes Lancelot sold at 30,000gns, the second top price paid at a UK auction for a Simmental bull, and their nine bulls and heifers sold at auction over the year averaged out at £10,500.

The team includes brothers John and Matthew Barlow, who work alongside their dad, Michael (a past BSCS President),

This new objective clearly worked. Since 2010, the Barlows’ seventy-three bulls sold at Society sales in Stirling alone, have averaged £5,600. The family have built up customers for every bull born in the herd – those not sold at Society sales find homes with dairy customers and commercial herds. To breed bulls with the desired attributes, John says it is the female lines they have concentrated on improving and he cites the privately bought bull Ashland Tornado as a turning point.

“We bought Tornado at five months old from Pat and Frank Kelly in Northern Ireland, having researched the bull’s family line. He has gone onto breed some good sons, but it’s his daughters that have been particularly impressive – they have bred sons to 30,000gns and grandsons to 20,000gns. They are very well-balanced females, which is the type we aim to breed; structurally correct, medium sized cows that will do well with various bulls,” says John, who suggests this concentration on female lines probably comes as a result of their dairy background.

“That’s how we think with the dairy cows. They tend to breed daughters like the mother, so if we can get good female lines, they will breed good calves with different bulls. We do a lot of research into bloodlines and study what works.”

This approach results in the Barlows often buying in females from particular family lines off other high health herds and then breeding them with home-bred bulls. The 30,000gns Denizes Lancelot, sold in February 2022 at Stirling, had two generations of home-bred bulls on the sire side, while the dam was Denizes Hannadante, a 13-year-old daughter of Ashland Tornado. Likewise, Denizes Monty, which secured the Barlows their first overall championship at Stirling and went onto sell for 20,000gns in October 2022, is sired by the home-bred Denizes Hamish.

“Hamish is out of our ‘golden cow’ Auroch Eve, which we bought as a calf. She won several calf shows and went onto win at the Royal Highland Show twice. Hamish was her first natural calf and was winning calf shows too, until he broke his leg at 11-months-old. We thought so much of him that we paid to have it operated on and kept him as a stock bull. His son Monty made 20,000gns and we’ve another good son of his for Stirling in February,” explains John.

Along with keeping commercial traits in mind when breeding bulls, the Barlows say the whole herd is run very commercially. Cows are fed on a straw-based diet and plenty minerals and calve between June and September, while heifers calve from 2½-years-old, in February and March, with the calving system arranged with Society sale dates in mind. John says they aim for a 280-day calving interval.

“We’re big on pre-calving minerals and we also make sure we don’t rush calving. In the past, we’d be too quick to feel we had to assist with calvings, but we’ve learned to give them plenty time and they normally calve themselves with no issues,” he adds.

When it comes to deciding which females to breed from, the Barlows are very selective. They go by their Grandad’s theory ‘sell your best, keep your very best and beef the rest.’

“That’s what Grandad always said, and it’s still relevant today. We sell some of the best females privately or at Society sales, but there’s a good market for other types to sell as recipients. There’s a huge demand for Simmental females and we’ve definitely seen that increase in recent years. They have so many positive traits – good temperament, calving ease and milk.

“Our own breeding cows tend to get three chances – if it doesn’t work the first time, we’ll change the bull, but if she’s still not breeding to the standard that we’re looking for, we don’t keep her after the third calf,” says John.

The family sold the heifer, Denizes Eve’s Beauty 7th at December’s NxtGen sale at Carlisle, for 8,000gns. She is a daughter of Auroch Eve, and sired by Blackford Galaxy, another privately bought bull that’s proved his worth in the herd. He was breed champion at the Royal Highland in 2018 and has bred sons to 9,500gns. More recently, Saltire Impressive joined the herd, a bull with excellent figures, including huge growth rates but also ease of calving.

“We do pay a lot of attention to figures because we’ve found they do make a difference. Denizes Hamish is in the top 1% for calving ease – he was a small when born but thrived from that day onwards and that’s what you want. The buyers are noticeably paying attention to figures too – we had eight bulls at a sale recently, four with better figures than the other four. There was a far higher demand for the four with better figures, they sold easily.

“We’re looking for a quick return by maximising output from a very simple, minimum input, self- sufficient livestock system that has to fit in with the arable operations, which had been managed by just the two of us until Charlie decided to come home a couple of years ago,” Tom explains. “And we’ve found that our Simmentals are delivering.

“We’ve been grading up our commercial sucklers – they’ve virtually reached purebred status, and together with their calves, they’re thriving on pure forage diets.

“The herd grazes our 50ha of river meadows, which are in Countryside Stewardship, from April turn out until December when outwintering is extended. The herd is introduced to strip graze 13ha stubble turnips and brassicas prior to housing at the end of the month. Once housed, they’re fed silage until after calving in January when we introduce them to homegrown rolled oats to give milk a boost.

“The same applies to the calves; they graze with their dams until weaned in November, when they’re housed and introduced to least cost

When Charlie Beaty returned home she says she was determined not to let the grass grow under her feet. “I went to Harper Adams University, graduated in Agriculture in 2017, spent the next two years in Australia driving combines and working on a stock property before flying home and then considering other jobs in the industry, however I didn’t find anything that suited,” she says.

“Instead I’ve made a space for myself in the family farming business which has eased the pressure all round. Yes, I’m the skivvy, I get a lot of flak, however I’m all about further stepping up the unit’s efficiency and providing all round help including introducing new ideas. For example, we’re considering introducing weigh cells to enable us to more accurately assess herd performance and act accordingly.

“As well as launching a box meat enterprise, I’ve taken over managing the sheep and am currently working towards closing the flock.

Charlie Beaty’s beef and lamb box enterprise is providing a welcome boost to the family’s farming business.

“Yes, there are margins to be made, however we’re also getting a lot of satisfaction from selling our own Simmental beef at the farm gate: it’s 100% forage fed, locally slaughtered, hung 28 days, totally natural, no processing,” she says. “And it’s particularly rewarding to hear from repeat customers – we love the interaction; they come back saying they’ve never eaten such high-quality meat before. We know we’re getting things right.

“By close of 2021, we’d sold nine cattle through the beef boxes in 12 months, whilst demand for lamb boxes has almost doubled in the last two years to 15 boxes per month. Margins on the lamb box are slimmer than those for beef, however we regard lamb as a marketing tool to selling more beef.

“We keep things simple. I use social media for marketing purposes – I’ve over 10,000 followers across Facebook and Instagram, whilst all sales are via social media too. The boxes have to be pre-ordered one month in advance prior to collection at the farmgate on one set day per month. The logistics require quite a lot of organising the day before collection, however we don’t have any real over heads and the whole sales operation is completed for the month in a very short time period.”

Welcome to West Wales, where my son Harry and I farm 275 acres together with another 120 rented acres.  Our climate is gentle thanks to the gulf stream and ideal grass growing country, which we try to utilise to the max.  We carry 105 suckler cows and all followers are kept right through to either breed or to fatten.  The farm has been organic for more than 20 years, producing milk, corn and beef.  Without the use of chemicals, the farm has thrived with the dairy herd averaging 7800 litres/cow.  Clovers – red and white – are the mainstay with arable silage boosting yields.  In 2011 we decided to sell off the milking cows and increase the suckler herd.  The majority of our beef cows were graded up from the dairy herd, and we found half bred cows had loads of milk, whilst the 15/16^th cows have a lot more muscle.  Each year we try to bull 20 to 25 heifers, and now all pedigree.

We originally bought Simmentals in 1987 after using MMB Halo on the dairy cows.  Those first cross breds showed to us the growth the breed had, and so our first pedigree purchase was Estelle 3^rd and Tascha 14^th from the Heywood sale.  Then, in 1990, came Revelex Avril 3^rd, Avril 11^th and Avril 12^th out of Fincham Avril ERM.  We always look for stock from a very good female line.  Fincham Avril should have made Golden Cow, but alas, because she had moved farms, she didn’t have 3 calved cows on the same unit and so missed out.  The Avril family went on to produce Welston Frontier Avril who classified EX94. The Tascha family became our firm favourites with Welston Elgars Tascha classified Ex94, and a host of daughters classifying excellent (and maybe one of the first EX Simmentals to breed 3 generations EX).   Having bred Holstein for 30 years, Beef Character, legs and feet, body and mammary had improved the dairy herd no end, so we were keen to classify the Simmentals as we are well aware of the benefit.  

Initially, we had only used AI – Rickardstown Jumbo and Camus Brandy on our pedigree Simmentals.  However, we also used Sacombe Wishful Thinking on dairy cows and heifers as well as pedigree Simmentals.  Wishful Thinking was a very good all-round bull.

A few final thoughts.  We need to work with our neighbours as one breed.  Simmental is one of the largest breeds in the world but we have to be open and mindful that this great breed is slipping behind in the UK.  We must look at the work of breeds like the Stabilizers who are measuring feed efficiency, weight trait trend, average weaning and finisher index by year of birth and, most importantly, average profit by year of birth which has improved by 100% since 2010.  Stabilizers also claim to be the most carbon efficient suckler cow, and, another milestone, they are now geonomically testing to enhance all their EBVs.  Don’t forget, the Stabilizer has Simmental in its makeup!  With all our leading traits, Simmental can get back to be THE LEADING BREED.  

Let’s make it happen! 

County Londonderry farmer Allister Calvin initially bought a Simmental bull to produce suckler replacements, but quickly realised that the breed’s dual-purpose traits also delivered satisfactory results in his bull beef finishing unit.

“The Simmental is a good all-rounder, offering beneficial maternal and terminal traits,” said Allister who farms in partnership with his father William at Ballystrone on the outskirts of Coleraine.

The father and son duo have been crossing Simmental on their Limousin and Belgian Blue cross-bred cows. “The Simmental cross is the ideal suckler cow with good conformation, sound legs and feet, a nice temperament, great mothering ability and plenty of milk.

“Over the years we have boosted our profitability by selling surplus heifers as replacements to repeat customers. Heifers are sold at approximately thirteen-months-old at a price equivalent to that of a finished animal.”

Allister and William have been producing bull beef for Foyle Meats since 2002. Meticulous records confirm that the Simmental also has a lot to offer when it comes to beef production. “Our Simmental carcases are averaging 403 kilos deadweight and achieving U-2+ grades at around 15.2 months of age. That’s an average 0.88 kilo of carcase gain per day,” explained Allister.

“Our top performing bulls are ‘flying’ and can achieve 1.21 kilos of carcase gain per day, which is equivalent to 1.46 kilos daily liveweight gain from birth.”

He continued: ”Meat plants have introduced weight restrictions meaning heavy, lean carcases are penalised. We are under pressure to finish our bulls lighter, and it can be a big challenge to get enough fat cover on them at a younger age. The Simmental is ideal as it produces good fat cover at around 400 kilos.”

Breedplan figures are an essential selection tool when it comes to selecting stock bulls for the farm’s suckler enterprise. Bulls are always bought on above average figures.

Simmental bulls at Ballystrone have included the April 2011 Omorga Casper – a full brother to Omorga Volvo – bought privately from Harry and John Moore’s herd in Beragh, County Tyrone.

“I like a muscly bull with good conformation and breed character,” added Allister who paid 8,500gns to secure Omorga Eli at Stirling in October 2014. Sired by Ashland Brandy and bred from a Cleenagh Flasher dam, the February 2013 bull is still working in the herd. Eli is ranked in the breed’s top 1% for eye muscle area +6.0, and top 5% for milk +10, terminal production index +101 and self-replacing index +112.

For almost twenty years Allister worked full-time as a beef and sheep adviser for the Department of Agriculture and Rural Enterprise in Northern Ireland. He recently gave up the role to return to the family farm.

“…cross-bred Simmental cows are hardy and can withstand outwintering in the hills. We like medium-sized cows that can hold condition easily. Longevity is another added benefit of the Simmental!”