LIVE sales of machinery, implements, tractors and UTVs/ATVs, together with reclaim, stone and timber items, made a welcome return to Skipton Auction Mart, with 248 lots on offer to both eager returning and new buyers.

Leading the sale at £7,600 was a Kubota 900 Diesel UTV with powered brush and snow plough attachments, while an Arctic Cat Full Cab UTV made £5,000 and a 40-year-old Kubota B8200 market garden tractor with power loader £4,300. Several other four-figure prices were recorded, including £3,000 for a John Deere mower and £2,300 for a cattle trailer. Stone gateposts found a ready market, two lots making £660 and £650.

The mart also staged its monthly Saturday collective livestock sale of stirks, weaned calves and young store cattle, with 180 head forward and trade described as ‘flying’ for a turnout that included 102 steers, 63 heifers and eight bulls.

British Blue bullocks sold to a top of £1,175 from Keighley’s JS Normington, while from the same parish, TH Atkins presented the £700 top price Blue heifer. Limousin heifers were also keenly sought, R Bradley, from Bradford, selling a brace at £1,180 and £1,200.

Of the native entries, Aberdeen-Angus heifers sold to £905 from David and Jill Pennock, of Bolton Abbey, who also consigned the £830 top price Angus bullock. Six-month-old dairy-bred Shorthorn bullocks topped at £590 from Sheffield’s Brian Hawksworth.

The mart reports a growing customer base keen for all classes of stirks/small stores, with both local and travelling purchasers in attendance, the latter coming from places such as Durham, Sheffield, Preston and Thirsk.

The next Saturday fixture on August 7 will also incorporate two native cattle reduction sales, one from David and Iris Boothman’s local Halton herd, the other from the well-known Upsall Beef Shorthorn herd near Thirsk.