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…