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Supreme champion and winner of three other challenge cups at Barnstaple and District’s Dairy Show last week was the four year old Ayrshire cow ‘Dairy Maid’ owned and bred by Mr K F Stanbury, of Downland Farm, Higher Clovelly.

1954 Clovelly farmer1

The photograph shows Mr Stanbury with the champion while his father holds the trophies. ‘Diary Maid’ was one of the team of Ayrshires which won the breed championship at the show. She gave 11, 240lb of milk as a heifer and his now yielding 7½lb of milk a day in her second lactation.
At last year’s show she won a cup as the best dairy heifer in local classes.
Mr A A Copland, of Ilminster, a New Zealander, who supervises Lord Beaverbrook’s 14 farms in this country, judged the championship classes. He said afterwards that there was extremely little difference between the champion and the runner-up, another Ayrshire cow, exhibited by Mr A Shapcott, of Cross Farm, Bishopsnympton.
‘These Ayrshires would take a whole lot of beating at the Dairy Show at Olympia’ said Mr Copland adding that that was not only his own opinion but that of leading Ayrshire breeders present.
Among seven breeds attracted to the show, the Ayrshires carried off the breed championship as well as individual honours, and Mr Copland said this breed was outstanding. He put the Friesians second and the Shorthorns third.
Mr Copland said he had considerable difficulty in deciding the reserve championship between Mr Shapcott’s Cross Rustic 1st and the Shorthorn shown by Mr E G Bean, of Abbotsham, which won the individual championship last year. Mr Bean’s entry was an outstanding one, but ‘did not seem quite herself’ that day.

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