Laghey ewe's lamb quadruplets an unexpected but delightful surprise

The end of his lambing season brought about an unexpected bonus to Laghey sheep farmer Peter McGee over the weekend. Farming since he was a teenager, this was the first time to witness the delivery of four lambs from the one ewe at the farm in Ballybulgan.

Peter told the Democrat/DonegalLive:

“It was the ewe’s first lambs and she is only a small ewe as well. I just couldn’t believe it.

I had her scanned for three. It’s not easy to see the fourth in a scan. All are doing well and they are out in the field with her today. They’re would not be that many of them around. Three yes, but not four!”

And it was a long night or should one say, early Saturday morning:

“They started at half two on Saturday morning, I delivered the first one at half two, then at half three I delivered the next one and at half four, I delivered the third one.

“I had them all fed and then I thought everything was over. I went down to check them and she had lambed one on her own. She wouldn’t have lambed them, the first three, if I hadn’t been there.”

As to the breeds, he said that the ewe was a Cheviot and the ram was a Texel with three males and one female being delivered.

Peter has been farming “since he could walk” and this was hastened when his late father passed away, when he was just 14 years of age.

Then he also got a job in Magees in Donegal Town and that kept him busy with the farming and Magees, where he worked for 40 years before retirement.

He remarked with the understatement: “It was a busy sort of a life.”

Before the sheeping farming came the cattle and the suckler herds.

Asked how the present lambing season was going he said:

“They’re up now. Ramadan and Easter are coming up, so that has lifted the market a bit, although they were down there for a while. Ramadan always helps the market here.”

The ewe was served by the ram back in early October, which means that it has been a very busy time of late for the Laghey based farmer.

Among this year’s yields for Peter have been twins and two sets of triplets.

“They’re wouldn’t be many in the four bracket; to get them all living is the big one. Once you get them fed and the colostrum, that is very important to get them fed as soon as possible after they are lambed. That gives them a boost,” he added.

“There is always something different in the farming, it certainly gives a lift,” a reference to the anecdote of the long days and late nights during the lambing season.

He said that It was all a bit of excitement “and the ones that were visiting as well”.

A normal working day for Peter is a 6am start and “going then until it gets dark”.

Asked about the changing times at the weekend, in his personal experience, it makes no difference to him personally.

As to the work he did at Magees, it was a very responsible one that he did, right up to the age of retirement. Even then the company would have liked to have kept him on, he said.

“I done the final inspection of the cloth and I sent cloth all over the world, you could say. 40 years service with them. I had to pass the cloth before it went to all the factories to be made up. You couldn’t have 50 jackets made up and a fault in one. It was a very specialised job.”