The Herd: The Standlynch herd now consists of approximately 85 breeding cows and heifers, from 2014, with one exception, all are now home bred. The herd was started in 1999 with a purchase of 2 females from the Bramshaw Hill herd, and then following further purchases has been built slowly built up, then a vigorous policy of heifers replacing older cows was implemented in 2009-2012. The herd has now been split into two equal groups to calve in February and September and so assure an availablity of bulls at times of peak demand and to provide heifers to calve at 30 months of age. All calving occurs outdoors, with the February calvers benefitting from the underlying chalk. Our bulls are normally sold at 18 months of age. They spend a large proportion of their lives predominantly outside and in consequence are not forced and so will not be in “show” condition as we expect them to be put to work straight away. We aim is to have all cows with top 30% figures and to produce the majority of bulls for sale with top 10% Terminal and Self Replacing indices. Many have easy calving figures to produce bulls for dairy and heifer use. In many cases bulls are now within top 5% figures and with several now have achieved top 1% figures. We now expect our annual calf crop to average around the top 10% level for TI and SRI. Some of our recent (December 2017) Breedplan graphs can be seen: HERE They amply illustrate our continuing progress in improving our cattle’s EBV’s.