Young Colleton Jack, now 22 months old, is huge and still growing.  He finished his show season with breed champion at the Royal Berkshire Show and a second in the native interbreed class at Beef South West.

We will be out again at Devon County Show and hope to see some of you there.  It’ll be a great day as Devon County is hosting our second National Show come on the first day to watch the judging and enjoy Devon Cattle Breeders hospitality.

Our yearling bull, Colleton Jack, has won his class at all the summer shows we have been to and been Junior Champion at North Devon Show and Okehampton Show.  Our yearling heifer, Colleton Winsome 3rd., has ben placed first or second throughout the summer,  Colleton Petal 2nd has also been first or second and her calf, Petal 11th. has been much admired.  Colleton Primrose 2nd. a 2 year old heifer, who we only broke in in July, has made a successful start with a number of 3rds. and has also been a member of our winning group of 3 with Jack and Winsome.

We are only going to one more show this year, the Royal Berkshire in Newbury on 18th.and 19th. of September.  Do, please, come and visit us in the cattle lines or at the ringside if you come to the show.

We will also be at Beef South West on Wednesday, 29th. September with Jack who has been chosen as one of 3 yearling bulls to represent the breed in the pedigree yearling bull class.  Do come along, it promises to be a great day out.  Adam Henson will be opening the day and, along with many livestock and meat classes, there will be Food Festival and a Butchery and Cookery Theatre.  It all takes place at Exeter Livestock Market in Marsh Barton and is under cover.

Colleton Jack and Grania receiving the May Cup at North Devon Show

So, next time you feel tired or you can’t concentrate, reach for a juicy piece of Red Ruby Devon steak rather than a bar of chocolate it’ll perk you up and it’s much better for you too.

Also from Australia comes an interesting piece of research related to global warming.  The newspapers have recently been making a lot of noise about the amount of methane cattle produce during digestion.  It turns out that the amount of methane absorbed by pasture for one cow (8,760 kg/year) far outweighs the amount of methane that cow produces (54 kg/year).  So grass fed cattle are good for the planet!

Back home at Colleton, we expect to start calving very soon.  Last year’s calves have gone out onto some pasture which we will be reseeding this spring.  We have cleaned the shed out, bedded it with fresh straw, and put the cows in.  This will be our maternity ward until it is warm enough to calve outdoors.

This week it was time to wean the 2 bulls which are now ten months old. They didn’t seem to mind at all but their mothers made a bit of a fuss as they always do. However everyone has calmed down now and the young bulls have joined our older bulls who are very curious about them.

We solved the problem by turning most of the cattle out into the fields by the river. How lucky we are to have a river running through our farm! 

Devons have thick curly coats to protect them from the cold

We found the most sheltered parts of the fields and made up nice straw beds for them to lie down out of the wind. We also took out their silage feeders so that there is plenty for them to eat and they have settled down very well. The youngsters seem to rather enjoy running around in the snow.

Red Ruby Devons feeding in the fields of a wintery Colleton Manor

With the ground frozen hard this is a good opportunity to do some muck spreading which we hope to do in the next couple of days. This will give a good boost to the spring grass. It will also mean that when the great freeze is over the cattle come into nice clean yards for the rest of the winter.

Devons have thick curly coats to protect them from the cold and, on the whole they are happier out than in. The only reason we house them during the winter is to stop them from poaching the land. 

Winter feed for all our youngsters is a mix of pea, barley and grass silage which we grow ourselves. This gives them the right amount of protein to keep growing through the winter without having to supplement their feed with bought in products. The calves tucked straight into their silage and didn’t even make much fuss about being weaned which was lovely.

Petal in her stall

The cows have also settled well into their winter quarters which is a wood chip corral. This allows us to keep the cows out, which they much prefer, without them messing up next season’s grass. They have a nice warm wood chip bed to lie on and go onto a straw diet to slim them down a little before they calve again in early spring. In the winter the bulls come in in the day and go out at night to have a bit of a play around. They do make quite a mess, but it keeps them fit and ensures we don’t have bulls with back problems when they start work in the spring.

This winter we have two home-bred young bulls which we hope to sell to work in another herd next year and our two stock bulls, Forde Abbey Gulliver who is coming up for 3 years and Bollowal Maestro who will be 4 next year. The only cattle still out are 18 beautiful in-calf heifers who are happily munching the remains of the grass in our riverside meadows. Anyone travelling on the Tarka line between Exeter and Barnstaple can see them as they go by.

Simon and Grania Phillips

Welcome to the Colleton Red Ruby Devon Blog.

We have set up this Blog to tell you about our family run business based in the beautiful North Devon countryside; rearing Red Ruby Devon beef.

We sell boxed beef products direct from our farm to residents throughout the UK.  Our customers can enjoy Devon farm fresh quality and the succulent taste and flavour of one of the South West’s finest breeds of cattle.

Red Ruby Devon Beef in standing in front of Colleton Manor