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North Otago farmers Peter and Pauline Dodd took home a major prize at the National Golden Fleece Exhibition last weekend.
The exhibition, in its 57th year, was hosted by the Central Otago A&P Association at WS Hickey & Son’s wool store in Omakau.
Mr and Mrs Dodd won the supreme strong wool fleece award.
They had won class categories before but had "never ever come close to winning" a supreme award, Mr Dodd said.
"It had a very good clean fleece weight.
"[It was] everything the judges were looking for, I think."
The fleece was judged on eight different criteria — colour, soundness, staple length, staple formation, crimp, handle, lustre and freedom from fault.
The Dodds’ fleece received a score of 98 out of 100.
"It just scored well in all those judging criteria."
The fleece had also won the supreme white fleece award at the North Otago A&P Show in February.
"The hogget, when it was through the winter it had a nice fleece and I took it out and gave it a bit of preferential feeding," Mr Dodd said.
"I shore it in November and it was just under 5kg of greasy weight."
All fleeces were judged by Kevin Waldron, of PGG Wrightson, and Andrew McNeill, of the Zentera Wool Company.
The couple have a 400ha farm in Tapui, inland from Oamaru, and have been there for more than 30 years.
Their main enterprise is breeding Romney sheep and they also run trading cattle in the winter.
"We’ve never gone down the road of crossbreeding with other breeds — we’re pretty much basically a straight pure Romney flock."
The exhibition also coincided with WS Hickey & Son’s celebration of 70 years in business.
The day included a fashion show of woollen garments, demonstrations from spinners and weavers as well as a traditional country-style afternoon tea to conclude the event.