Shearing: Amy Silcock smashes world record in Pahīatua

Amy Silcock in the last stages, about the time she passed the previous record of 370 ewes. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand

Farmer-turned-shearer Amy Silcock has smashed a world record near Pahīatua, but the elation is still dimmed by the couple that got away.

Shearing under the watch of four World Sheep Shearing Record Society judges, the 37-year-old claimed the women’s solo eight-hours strongwool ewe-shearing record on Sunday with a tally of 386 at Ross Na Clonagh Farm, just off the Pahīatua track and where the temperature in the four-stand woolshed soared to about 32C late in the afternoon.

Her record stood for three days, until Catherine Mullooly set a new solo women’s eight-hours strongwool ewes record of 465.

Silcock’s tally could have been 388, the judges rejecting two of those shorn in the last of the four two-hour runs during the record bid, which started at 7am and - with breaks for morning and afternoon tea and lunch - saw the previous record of 370 passed half an hour before the last of the sheep was popped through the porthole just after 5pm.

Keeping just ahead of the required pace from the start, she caught, sheared and dispatched close to 25 tonnes of sheep and added about 1.35 tonnes of wool to the national fleece, the first three runs without blemish.

With 95 and 97 in the two runs before lunch and a gut-busting 101 in the first two hours after what was a light graze, she still got 93 in the last two hours, but said, towel across the shoulders, stubbie in hand but strung-out on the grass outside: “I’m disappointed I lost two in the last run. I’m glad I got that third run [the 101], but it buggered me. I’ve got nothing left.”

Amy Silcock had nothing left in the tank after shearing a world women's solo eight-hour strongwool ewes record of 386. Photo / Shearing Sports New Zealand

Previous holder and Kent farmer Marie Prebble had runs of 94, 93, 93, and 90 when she established the record in the UK in August 2022.

Now the holder of two records - having first appeared on the records scene in a women’s four-stand lamb shearing tally - Silcock did have enough in her afterwards to say she’s got more to come.

“I’d like to do a two-stand,” she said. “Just got to find the right person and the right sheep.”

There had been a scare with rain and a drop in temperature on Saturday, when a shear of 10 of the flock produced an average 3.478 kg a ewe, safely above the minimum requirement of 3kg.

Also at Ross Na Clonagh was Scottish shearer Una Cameron, who gave Silcock her first shearing job in the UK and who is also planning a ewes record in the UK in August - “but not sure which one”.

Judging panel convener Mike Henderson, a New Zealander based in West Australia for many years and living at Dongara, north of Perth, described Silcock’s achievement as “a gutsy effort”, with a good support crew including farmers Matt and Sarah Walker.

The summer is now heading for a reshaping of all four women’s solo strongwool records, with both the eight-hours and nine-hours lamb shearing records having been smashed before Christmas, and an attack on the nine-hours ewes record scheduled for February.