Toplines and Tales

My great friend and real 'character' Jan Green has a birthday today, so it was fantastic to catch up with her to talk about the early days in the British Blues, hers and John’s leap of faith move to North Scotland and their successes ever since. Some great craic and reminisces on this one, even with John in the background!                                    

This week a combination podcast, with my character in livestock being the well known George Harvey, and a recording live from the Royal Welsh Show in Builth Wells in this highly spontaneous if not somewhat challenging episode.

Bruce Mair of the Muiresk Suffolk and Texel flocks in Turriff needs little introduction as one of the greatest minds in the sheep world. He speaks of the early days when the flock continued to annually break records, before we discuss the more recent venture into Beltex in this fascinating interview.

This week we run a special episode which some of you may have seen at the Scottish beef event, when it was my privilege to speak to Professor John Gilliland, a man who really knows his stuff in the beef business and, more importantly, has an incredible foresight into the future of our industry and particularly Carbon measurement and Net Zero. A must listen for every beef farmer, worldwide.

One of the greatest characters in Scottish livestock, Ken Fletcher, long time editor of the Scottish Farmer magazine, shortly due to retire, talks through his times at the paper and the livestock industry in general, bringing along his usual wit and craic.

One of the most successful Angus breeders and showmen in Ireland, I speak to the well known and respected Albert De Cogan about his 60 yeas in showing cattle, and his links with the breed.

Not just any rancher, Jaclyn Wilson and her father from Nebraska have just won 2023 National Beef Quality Assurance Cow/Calf Producer of the Year out of over 700,000 beef cow operators in the United States. Running a large herd on the Nebraska Sandhills, an area she likens to ‘the Sahara Desert, only with vegetation,’ stock rate is 1 pair to 15-20 acres! As well as being on the board of the NCBA, Jaclyn has recently launched their own beef label marketing an Environmentally produced product at Flying Diamond Beef Ranch.

I speak about sheep shearing with possibly two of the funniest guys in agriculture, Dye Clark and Cammy Wilson, as we preview the Golden Shears world sheep shearing event due in Edinburgh next week. One is chief commentator and the other a competitor, both with a huge depth of knowledge of the sport.  

Scotland doesn’t have many characters more ‘larger than life’ than my guest this week, Albert Howie from Aberdeenshire. Albert tells of his early days in continental sheep, his business dealings in Eastern Europe, before moving on to the Texel and Limousin flocks for which Knock is better known.

From a family background in pedigree sheep and learning his trade at 2 of the country's top Texel flocks, Jeff Aitken has spent 14 years building up the top flock at Procters Farms. Now with the added responsibility of being Chairman of the Texel sheep Society, we talk through his achievements as well as the planned celebrations for the breeds 50th birthday next year.