An exciting day the Smithfield Show. Our bull, Fenlady Hereward, sired a bull calf that took Champion Lincoln Red bull at the Smithfield Calf Show in December 2014. This young bull, Tommy, was part of the winning team to take the Duke of Norfolk Cup for the Lincoln Reds for the first time since the early 1980’s.

Winning a red rosette with Fenlady Claire S71, at the Smithfield Calf Show at the East of England Showground in December, was the perfect way to say a possible farewell to the show circuit.
With ongoing back problems, the 2013 summer show season started and ended with just our stock bull Fenlady Hereward being drawn from the field for 2 days to go to Deeping Show. A large entry of Lincoln Reds saw Hereward gain a 2nd in his class, at what was to be the last Deeping Show to be held.

2012 show season had to be a very scaled back affair due to my bad back. We only entered 2 shows, Deeping and Lincoln. From just the 2 shows we came away with a 1st, 2 2nds, some 3rds and a 4th. This year we entered the cow and calf classes for the first time, gaining a 1st at Deeping and a 2nd at Lincoln, with a Reserve Special for the calf that I showed on the cow. There were 23 Lincoln Reds at Deeping Show and 59 Lincoln Reds at the Lincolnshire Show. In all we are very pleased with our results.

2011 saw the Fenlady herd back in a few of the show rings again. What was going to be just a heifer for the YFC to use, gradually turned into a mini show team. Our animals were just out on grass, but doing well in a drought year. We went in the field each day and halter trained them.

As a late entry for Deeping Show we drew our stock bull Hereward from the field on the Friday, gave him his first shampoo for 5 years, gained a 2nd place with him on the Saturday and put him back in the field Saturday evening. That prompted the decision to leave him with the cows but to remove him from the field, at the last minute, just for Yorkshire and Heckington.

Lincoln Show had a marvellous entry of over 50 Lincoln Reds. With just 3 young stock we were happy with 2nd place for Eleanor and 4th place for Norman Conquest.

At Yorkshire with another large entry of Lincoln Reds we again took 3 and gained 2nd place with Hereward, 2nd place with Damsel, 2nd place in a group of 3, 3rd place for Norman Conquest and 3rd place in the pairs.

For Heckington Show we drew Melissa from the field to make our team. Overall there were 18 Lincolns entered for the show. Our little team gained a 1st and Reserve Junior Champion with Melissa, 1st place with Norman Conquest, 2nd place with Hereward, 4th with Damsel and 4th in the pairs.

Not a bad collection of rosettes for a small herd.

To top the year we also won the Reserve Champion Small Herd prize (less than 25 cows), awarded at the Lincoln Red Cattle Society AGM.