Goodbye, George. A sad day at Coopers Farm. George, more formally known as Coopers Poll Regent 3rd, is a six-year-old pedigree Sussex bull bred on the farm, now in his prime and moving on to pastures new.
Our calves are all born in March and unusually we don’t castrate our bull calves at birth but leave them ‘entire’ to grow on in their first summer. They will have been weighed every three months and this data will support the visual criteria used to select the top two or three to keep and grow on to become breeding bulls. The others are ‘chopped’ and we all know what ultimately happens to them.
The potential young studs then spend the next eighteen months getting the best rations and have to clear a couple of hurdles before they get their passport to ‘work’. Firstly they have to be inspected by the Sussex Society to make sure they are good representatives of the breed, no white hairs, good pink nose, well grown and with a good frame. And then there’s the vet check. Sarah, our lovely vet, will be giving them a general MOT covering heart, lungs, eyes, set of their jaw, locomotion and, importantly, scrotal circumference. This is an indication of fertility and as a layman’s guide the family jewels on a good two-year-old bull should be like two cans of coke (the old fashioned fat ones not those mini slim cans you get on aeroplanes).

At the Royal Norfolk Show we even met HM the King, who took a keen interest in the Sussex breed, said very complimentary things about George and seemed genuinely interested in the price I charge for a pound of prime mince!

So he and me have spent the last year going to all the summer shows and, bless him, he has done very well. At the Royal Norfolk Show we even met HM the King, who took a keen interest in the Sussex breed, said very complimentary things about George and seemed genuinely interested in the price I charge for a pound of prime mince!
But now he really, really does have to go. Bulls remain fertile well into their teens but their enthusiasm for the job does fall off after about eight or nine. If he has a herd of say thirty cows and two are in season at the same time a young bull will enthusiastically sort one and then the other. The older bull will probably sort out one and then go and have a cigarette and a nap under a hedge. Not good when you want all the cows to get pregnant and calve around the same time.
George, at six, is good for one more commercial job, so later this month he’s off to a lovely home near Canterbury where they have over a hundred cows. Don’t worry, it won’t just be down to George – they have quite a few bulls. And so here at Coopers we will start shopping for a replacement. Exciting times.