A ewe has given birth to six healthy lambs on farm in North Wales.
A ewe has given birth to healthy sextuplets on a farm in Meirionnydd, North Wales. The ewe’s pregnancy scan had shown triplets, so the arrival of six lambs came as a surprise to its owner, young farmer Erin Fflur McNaught.
The lambs are being given powdered milk from a bottle, because the lambs’ mother is not producing enough milk to feed all six. One of the lambs was smaller than the others and required some additional care. It was taken into the house where it was put in front of the fire.
Ms McNaught told the BBC that the lambs are all doing well, after a shaky start for one. She said: "They're all up on their feet with a belly full of milk and under the infrared lamp that keeps them warm, so they're all happy now."
Twenty-year-old Ms McNaught is the current student and young farmer ambassador for NFU Cymru, and an award-winning sheep dog handler. She is taking over her family’s farm in North Wales. Her grandfather, in his 70 years of farming experience, has never witnessed a ewe give birth to so many lambs.
Sheep usually have between one and three lambs. The chance of quadruplets is approximately one in 500, and quintuplets and sextuplets are extremely rare. The record stands at eight lambs born to a single ewe.
In 2021, a ewe on a Scottish farm gave birth to eight lambs, although one lamb subsequently died. In 2022, two sets of quintuplet lambs were born on a farm in Swindon, which the owner, Pippa Burr described to the BBC as a “one in a million” event.
Ms McNaught commented to the BBC about the lamb sextuplets. She said: "Triplets are quite common but six is very, very rare.
"To have them all alive is something even more rare. For six lambs to be healthy is something very, very special."
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