Shearing Record Update 3
A dramatic afternoon is expected as King Country shearer Sacha Bond battles her way through a World women’s nine-hours strongwool ewes shearing record bid in a Northern Southland woolshed.
Starting at 5am, and originally forecast by some as capable of over 500 for the day, she’s hovered all morning around the target of an average of 12.5834 sheep a quarter-hour to break the record of 452 shorn by Kerri-Jo Te Huia in 2018
At the start of the hour-long midday lunch-break, with five-and-a-half hours’ shearing gone at Centrehill Station, near Mossburn, she had a provisional tally of 277 – an average of 12.59 sheep a quarter-hour.
Bond, based at Piopio but originally from Woodville and having returned from a stint in Australia to make the record attempt, shore 98 in the first run from 5am-7am, 91 in the next from 8am-9.45am, and provisionally 88 from 10.15am to midday. She faces two more 1hr 45min runs taking the attempt through to the end at 5pm.
Establishing the ewes record six years ago, Te Huia, originally from Marton but also having moved to Te Kuiti, shore runs of 101, 90, 87, 86 and 88
The record attempt is being livestreamed free on the "Sacha Bond World Record Shearing" and "Perkinz Farming Products" facebook pages, with organisers alerting followers to avoid other links, especially those that appear in comments on facebook pages.
The fourth run stats at 1pm, in the same woolshed as that in which Bond shore a lambs record of 720 on December 19.
Today’s record got the green light from the four-man World Sheep Shearing Records Society judging panel when 31.06kg of wool was shorn from 10 ewes in a sample shear on Thursday afternoon, safely meeting the requirement of an average of at least 3kg of wool per sheep.