´óÏó´«Ã½

« Previous | Main | Next »

Cattle lines are drawn

Post categories:

Rachael Garside Rachael Garside | 15:06 UK time, Tuesday, 19 July 2011

It's day two of the Royal Welsh 2011 and there's more of a buzz in the air.

Officially, attendance figures for yesterday were down by around two thousand on last year, but it definitely feels like there's more people around today.

I started out bright and early at 8am in the cattle lines - this time with the dairy cows. Another scene of frantic preparation as the competitors got their animals ready for the showring.

I met up with James Evans from Carmarthenshire who's here with his Jersey cattle - he'd brought an incredible eight cows in total, but with seven helpers on hand, 'Team James' were ready for action.

James told me he'd had some bad luck recently, his best cow and best hope for the show this year, died suddenly a couple of weeks ago and he's still clearly quite emotional when talking about her.

"I don't think people realise how attached we get to these animals, it's going to be quite difficult going into the showring without her this year", he told me.

But you wouldn't have known watching James in the show ring earlier and he was obviously delighted when his intermediate cow 'Daffodil' came second in her class, with the Show President, Dick Jones on hand to hand out the prizes.

On to the dairy goats and despite a disappointing number of entries this year, Shane Jones who farms just half a mile from the showground here in Builth Wells, is keen to promote goats and their development.

He's currently publicity officer for the and wants to spread the word. He's here this year with eight eight of his British Toggenburg goats, which were drawing the crowds over in the goat section.

I'm heading back over to the cattle ring next, to watch one of my favourite competitions at the show - the Beef Team of Five.

It's a tremendous sight to see 15 teams of mighty beef cattle parading around the ring, in a competition which was actually started at the Royal Welsh and has gone on to be 'adopted' by other shows across the country. I'll report back on the results tomorrow.

It's been great to sit down for a few minutes to write this but time now to head back into the crowds and get back to the show.

Comments

Be the first to comment

More from this blog...

´óÏó´«Ã½ iD

´óÏó´«Ã½ navigation

´óÏó´«Ã½ © 2014 The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.