A Powys cattle sale reported booming sales with average prices rising by over £300.

McCartneys Auctioneers at Brecon said that interest from both pedigree and commercial buyers drove the trade at the Limousin sale on May 11.

The auction had a top price of 11,000gns, both the bulls sold and average prices were up on the year with 21 bulls going off to new homes and the average increasing by £324 to £5895.

Lot 38, Woodmarsh Tycoon, was the top priced bull, and a flurry of bids saw him knocked down at 11,000gns to his new owner Wilodge Limousin from Shifnal, Shropshire.

Bought forward for sale by breeders M and JC Gould from Shrewsbury, the November 2022-born Tycoon had “an impressive pedigree and figures to match”.

Sired by the 50,000gns Carlisle supreme champion, Wilodge Cerberus, and out of the 25,000gns Wilodge Onhigh, who goes back to Powerful Irish, the “shapely bull” had a “myostatin pairing of F94L/Q204 with a top 1 per cent muscle depth score, and growth, milk and beef value EBV’s in the top 10 per cnet of the national herd.”

Next in the trade stakes at 8,000gns, was the pre-sale show senior and reserve overall champion, Nealford Tinker, from JH Neale and Son, Launceston, Cornwall.

The April 2022-born bull was another with “myostatin of F94L/Q204” and had a retail value of LM46 – placing him in the top 10 per cent of the breed.

Bred out of the 16,000gns Ampertiane Inferno sired-Nealford Orlana, he is by stock bull and 17,000gns Loosebeare Nelson, who has bred more than 100 sons and daughters into the Nealford herd since his purchase in May 2018 and is going on to work for Messrs WI and J Adams, of the Tircanol herd in Swansea.

Tapping him out as the senior champion was the pre-sale judge Mark Davies, Pembrokeshire, who along with his wife Catherine and daughters Caryl, Sara and Lowri, established their Glencross herd in 2009.

Mark was impressed by Nealford Tinker and said: “He was a bull full of power and standing, with real breed character and good mobility. An ideal bull to produce shapely store cattle for the commercial buyer and good breeding females for the pedigree herd”.