National Herd Competition Winners Open Day!

We are thrilled to invite you to visit The Colcharton Herd, by kind invitation of The Edwards Family.

The Colcharton Herd of Pedigree South Devon Cattle was founded in 1966, after moving from Christow in the Teign Valley. Colcharton farm is situated near Tavistock on the Devon /Cornwall border, and farmed by the partnership of Colin Lowenna and Nick Edwards.

The herd is run on a commercial basis, specialising on breeding polled cattle, we have been doing this for over 40 years. It is a mixed farm of 420 acres, with 108 pedigree south Devon cows, 12 crossbred cows and 180 followers. There is 750 Suffolk X mules, which are put to texel rams , for early lamb production. There is 30 acres of crimped spring barley grown, used as our grass rotations.

Approx 90 cows are spring calving, with the other 30 calving in the autumn

Most of the heifers are retained for breeding, and calved to a Galloway bull at 2 years old, and their offspring are then finished and sold to the local butcher. A selection of pedigree bulls are retained for selling as breeding stock. This year the family were very pleased with their success of selling the highest price bulls at both the spring sale Exeter and Worcester. The rest are finished as bull beef, and sold at under 16 months.

We have been most fortunate with our choice of sires, using mainly polled bulls as much as possible Most of the females in the herd are from the bloodlines of Beckaveans Brutus, Trewint Clyde and Broadwood Haystacks.

Herd sires at present are Boakley Tiberius, Polkinhorne Granger(PP) and Coton Inquisitor (PP) Their young stock are showing great potential in the herd . Myostatin is an important part in our choice of sires ,using either O or F94L genes.

The family are proud to be part of the Herd Book Society, and are delighted to win the National Herd Competition for the 1st time.