Val’s A to Zippy of heavenly

Val Ledwith went against the grain in sticking with his favourite breed and shares his life story with Martin Ryan

ONE man who has never regretted ignoring the advice of his fellow pedigree livestock breeders is Val Ledwith who can look back on a remarkably successful lifetime breeding award-winning pedigree Herefords in Co Meath.

“You’re yesterday’s man,” he recalls being told by those concentrating their efforts on producing beef from alternative breeds who advised him: “You are going nowhere with the Herefords.”

“I am around a long time and should be fully retired by now,” says Val, but there was nothing ever strong enough to persuade him to move from Hereford since he first came into contact with the breed as a young teenager all of six decades ago.

“My first involment with the Herefords was in 1956. I was born on a farm near Athboy which you’d describe as a mixed farm and the store cattle that we kept were always Herefords.” he recalls.

“A neighbour started telling me about the merits of the Hereford when I was 14 or 15 years of age and then my father bought a Hereford bull from him and I suppose that was my first involvement. Around our way at that time it was all Hereford or Angus and the Friesians had not arrived in our area,” he added.

The interest in farming and the love for the Hereford never left him, throughout a successful lifetime, both on and off the farm, which ranged from showing champions at the leading agricultural shows in the country, to restoring Trim Castle, building a distillery for the Teeling Family in the Liberties or a shopping centre at Celbridge through the construction company which he set up nearly half a century ago.

He was also an accomplished athlete with the unique record of having retained a national title for an unbroken period of 13 years.

He wasn’t adverse to a bit of traditional ‘wheeling and dealing’ in land or livestock and enjoys nothing better than recalling some of the deals with other breeders over the decades.

“I put together a bit of money from a land swop and a house sale and bought the farm where I am now living in 1984,” he says of the 140-acre farm at Rathregan, Batterstown to which he adds a further 60 acres of rented land for the 170 head of pedigree Herefords, including 70 breeding females which are cared for with the assistance of “a truly great stock woman” in neighbour, Ann Murphy who has been doing the job for the past 16 years.

It wasn’t unusual for him to trade a bull for a few heifers and when he set sight on an animal that he really wanted, he wasn’t for giving up too easily.

Nothing he enjoys more nowadays than relating the unusual story of how one of the prized champion horned bull of all England, a Hereford, ended up on his farm in Co Meath.

While attending the Royal Show at Stoneleigh in the Summer of 2005, a young bull called Sarabande Zippy, competing in the Junior Bull Class caught his eye as he went on to win his class and finished up Reserve Junior Male Champion of the Show.

“If I could have picked any bull as a present that day it would have been Zippy. I followed his show career with interest after that, and later in the year at Tenbury in the National Hereford Show, Zippy was judged Intermediate Male Champion and Best Bull Less Than Two Years. He then went on to become Senior Male and Supreme Champion at the National Hereford Show in Tenbury the following year,” he recalls.

“I was very interested in that bull. I telephoned his owners, Mrs Pam Noel and Robert Snelling to congratulate them and during our chat enquired if they had any intention of selling their champion bull. The answer I got was a very definite ‘no’, not at this time, but they agreed if they changed their mind, I would be the first to know,” he said.

He was pleasantly surprised a few months later when they called him to say that they would consider selling Zippy. The following week he visited the farm to view the bull, his mother and grandmother on their farm and he liked everything he saw. “There was only one problem.lem. They were looking for a lot of money for the bull. I was wondering what to do, but did not want to let the opportunity to own Zippy pass,” he says. “I put a proposition to them for an exchange for a young bull, Rathregan Mark Robin. The nine-months-old, was Reserve Male Champion at Tullamore and won his class at Nenagh. When they heard that the judge in Tullamore was Clive Davies of Westwood Herefords, they were interested,” he explains. A few days later Pam and Robert visited Rathregan and a deal was closed for Zippy in exchange for Robin “plus a payment”, which Val was very happy with, and a round-the-clock journey with the Land Rover and trailer delivered Robin to his new home and brought Zippy to Westmeath.

“He did very well for me. I have some great cows in the herd after him. I have great daughters of his in the herd, including a grandson of Zippy but I am sorry that I did not get more progeny out of him,” he says.

He bought a bull called Ballinalick Robin in the nineties, winner of the Supreme Championship in Tullamore in 1999 and the RDS Championship