THE annual spring sale of pedigree Limousin cattle at Carlisle has attracted 418 head of cattle – the most for many years.

The British Limousin Cattle Society sale is at Harrison & Hetherington’s Borderway Mart on Friday and Saturday, May 5 and 6.

There are 218 bulls and 200 females entered – almost double the number of females entered last year – from across the UK and Northern Ireland.

Dougie Graham from Burnbank, Stirling, will judge the pre-sale show of bulls.

Judging begins at 9am on the Friday, followed by the sale of females at 2.30pm. The sale of bulls will be on the Saturday at 10.30am.

Grant Anderson, H&H auctioneer, said: “This is one of the society’s key sales of the year, renowned for attracting outstanding animals and this year will be no exception as we have such a tremendous catalogue of entries.

“Currently, there is strong confidence in the pedigree and commercial sectors of the cattle industry and this sale will as always, provide a very good spring benchmark as it is aimed at both commercial and pedigree breeders.”

Iain Kerr, BLCS chief executive, said: “The market is looking for easy-calving, quality, cheap-to-produce cattle that hit targets, and recent changes to weight specification at slaughter fit the Limousin breed extremely well.”

Full details are at harrisonandhetherington.co.uk.