A YORKSHIRE butcher paid £7,300 for the supreme cattle champion at last weekend’s English Winter Fair at Stafford.

B&T Kitson – who trades as The Yorkshire Butcher with shops in Northallerton and Stockton – fought off fierce bidding to buy Roxy Rose a Limousin-sired heifer exhibited by Gilbert Brooke of Alfrick, Worcester.

Bidders included Emily Jones, Rose’s breeder, and John Penny Meat, the Leeds-based meat supplier but it was Anthony Kitson who made the winning final bid of £7,300 (£12.37/kg liveweight).

The May 2011-born Roxy Rose was by Haltcliffe Chico out of a Limousin cross dam. She weighs 590kgs and has ten championships under her belt.

Judge Philip David said: “The champion is a superb animal, very even through the shoulder and across the top, well put together with very little waste once put through the butchers shop.”

Mr Kitson also bought the champion pork carcass, selected by students from Reaseheath College, Nantwich, for £203.67 (£3.10/kg) and the reserve pig carcass, entered by Ron Fieldhouse of Tadcaster, for £189.53 (£2.85/kg).

Mr Fieldhouse also had the reserve pen of live pigs which were bought by John Penny Meat for £95/head (£1.49/kg liveweight).

Pedigree cattle judge Jimmy Mulholland paid £3,000 (£5.08/kg liveweight) for the livestock show’s reserve champion, a Limousin crossbred heifer called Bang Tidy shown by TC Edwards, Corwen, North Wales.

JA Stoney & Son of Pateley Bridge took the reserve champion Blonde award with Mr Muscle, their home-bred 18-month-old Blonde cross bullock which won the breed championship at Countryside Live, Harrogate, in October.

The best pen of lambs was a pair of dark-fleeced Blue Texel ewe lambs from Steven and Sara Gibbons, of Hay on Wye, Herefordshire.

They made £950 apiece (£19.34/kg liveweight) when bought by AT Frogatt of Abbots Bromley, Staffs for breeding.

The Gibbons also had the reserve pen of lambs with a pair of Beltex ewe lambs which made £340 apiece (£7.37/kg liveweight) when bought for breeding by the Brown family of Bedale.