The eight-hour strong wool lamb shearing world record has been a Kiwi exclusive for most of the last 50 years.
The eight-hour strong wool lamb shearing world record has been a Kiwi exclusive for most of the last 50 years.
An English shearer who last Saturday smashed a shearing record, held by New Zealander Jack Fagan has credited his time learning in Hawke’s Bay as a major factor in the success - even before it happened.
English shearer Nick Greaves, who learnt much of what there is to know about shearing in Hawke's Bay, breaking the men's World eight-hour strong wool lamb-shearing record in Staffordshire last weekend. Photo / Agrimarketing
Gunning for the world solo eight-hour strong wool lamb shearing record, a Kiwi exclusive for most of the past 50 years, 29-year-old Nick Greaves, who underwent a shearing course in Hawke’s Bay at the age of 18 and spent at least eight summers working for Napier contractor, posted a new record of 764 lambs on family farm Amerton Meadows, in Staffordshire.
Shearing four two-hour runs, Greaves started explosively, with 199 in the first two hours - the most ever shorn on any single run in a World record attempt.
He followed with runs of 195, 190 and 180, and was always well ahead of the target; the 754 set by Te Kuiti gun Fagan at Puketiti Station, King Country, on December 22, 2022.
As it happened Greaves shore another 17, which were rejected from the count during the day by an international World Sheep Shearing Records Society refereeing panel convened by Pahiatua farmer Ronny King.
Relating to his time in Hawke’s Bay, Greaves told an English publication recently: “Lots from within shearing have inspired me but someone who has believed in me from day one is Pete Chilcott from New Zealand, who always told me I was good enough for a record and never doubted me. Pete gave me confidence when I needed it most and got me through a tally day we did in 2020 in the build-up to the first record. He has taught me the lamb pattern I use today.”
Nick Greaves and wife Kate Clarke in Napier in 2020, before they were married and during a season working in Hawke's Bay. Photo / Doug Laing.
On that day, in January 2020, in a blow-out ahead of a UK record bid later that year, Greaves shore 763 lambs in nine hours at Tarawera Station, in the pumice country between Napier and Taupō, on what were regarded as some of the toughest lamb shearing in the world.
As reported by soon afterwards, by the end of the third lamb that day he needed his first cutter change, when normally there would have been one every quarter-hour, and by the end of the day he’d used more than 200 cutters and 42 combs.
In his record, Fagan shore consecutive run tallies of 191, 183, 190 and 190 in his big day-out, and clock-watchers were assessing Greaves’ prospects from the start, with targets of under 38.15 seconds a lamb, or 23.6 lambs a quarter-hour, caught, shorn and despatched.
The average in the opening run was 36.18 seconds a lamb and the average for the day was a tick under 37.7sec, with Greaves’ record meaning that all four current men’s world solo eight-hour and nine-hour strong wool lambs records have now been set in England.
In 2022, during a two-stand big day out with Welsh shearer Llyr Jones, Greaves averaged 36.78 seconds a lamb setting a British nine-hour solo record on UK breeds, which, because of the nature of the breeds, have a lesser minimum wool-weight requirement.
The latest record, which ended early on Sunday, was overseen by a four-man panel of referees, with King joined by UK panellists Martyn David, Andy Rankin and Mark Fox.
A crucial point was reached on the eve of the attempt with a pre-record wool weigh; when the wool from a sample shear of 20 of the target flock averaged 0.94kg of wool per lamb, safely over the minimum requirement of 0.9kg, and on Saturday judges gave an average quality rating of 11.74, just inside the threshold of 12.
In the competition arena, Greaves was fourth in the Southland All-Nations senior final, alongside the 2017 World Championships in Invercargill, and in the Golden Shears senior final in Masterton three weeks later.
He graduated to the open class, and his biggest successes came at the Royal Bath and West Show in June when he won the English National, the UK Golden Shears Open and the Six Nations Championship.
Scottish shearer Una Cameron, the only woman to reach the Golden Shears Open top 30 in Masterton, was on Wednesday night (New Zealand time) attempting attempt the solo women’s nine-hour strong wool ewes record of 458 set by New Zealand shearer Sacha Bond in Southland in February.
The attempt was taking place at at Trefranck Farm, St Clether, Cornwall, run by New Zealand farmer and former Hawke’s Bay shearer Matt Smith and wife Pippa, and where the UK assault on the solo strong wool records started with Smith’s nine-hour ewes mark of 731 on July 26, 2016.
World solo sheep shearing records as of August 3, 2024
