A farmer had five very special reasons to celebrate when when her prize ewe gave birth to quintuplets.
Joan MacDonald, 40, who combines working as a nurse with keeping sheep, said it was “incredibly rare” for ewes to give birth to quins.
The woolly wonders, who weighed in at a combined 32lb, were born last Wednesday on the Hebridean island of North Uist and are now thriving.
Experts reckon the chance of a ewe having five healthy lambs is around one in 150,000.
Joan said the exhausted mum, a small cross Cheviot, was given a scan early in her pregnancy that showed she was carrying triplets.
“The three boys and two girls all came as a huge surprise,” she explained. “She’s quite a character in the flock, always standing up to the dog. She’s proving to be a very capable mum, too. Always fussing around her little ones.”
One of the ewe’s udders is not working so Joan, and her sister Sarah Fraser, 42, a teacher from Kingussie, have roped the family into bottle feeding.
“I have taken holiday leave and Sarah is using her school break to help out,” Joan smiled. “You could call it a labour of love but all the hard work was done by the ewe.”
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