Five lambs from one ewe is rare enough. At one family farm in England, it has now happened twice.
A ewe at Croft Farm in Uffington, Lincolnshire, gave birth to five healthy lambs in the early hours of last Thursday, April 9. The farm is run by sisters Liz, Kate and Susan Genever, the third generation of the Genever family to run it, and has around 300 sheep.
Susan Genever-Jones, 52, who also works for the National Association of Agricultural Contractors, said: “When the mother was scanned to check she was healthy, five lambs showed up on the scan.
“We knew we had to feed her more as she was carrying more than most and she was absolutely enormous during pregnancy.
“Two arrived at around 2 a.m. last Thursday and by 4 a.m., she had the others. It was a really lovely surprise. I did have a quick look at the odds, and it says one-in-a-million but I don’t think it even happens that often. We might get four to one sheep once a year so you might get that from one sheep out of around 500.”
“But to have five and for them all to live and be healthy is very rare indeed, plus mum did it all by herself.”
“They are all doing really well.
“You can’t keep all five with mum, so two have stayed with her while two others have been bottle-fed and hand-reared. Another one has been taken on by an adoptive mother who lost her own lamb this year. So they are all still on the farm, albeit in different places.”
“We had about 240 to lamb this season and we’ve got about 15 left. That has been over the last three weeks, which is okay considering the weather we had this winter.”
The farm has had quintuplet lambs before, in 1978. Susan said the same thing happened there 48 years ago.
Liz Genever said: “Kate and I were very young back in 1978 so we don’t remember it.
“But to have lightning strike twice at the same farm almost 50 years apart I suppose makes it even rarer. Liz was born two years after that but I’m sure we’ll all remember this for a long time.”
The sisters are sharing the lambs’ progress on their Instagram account.
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