The lamb season has not even started for a week for the Timmerman family from Hoogeveen, but they have already set a record. One of the sheep gave birth to quintuplets. Sheep farmers have not experienced this in four decades.
When Cor Timmerman entered the barn around 06:15 last Sunday morning, he immediately saw the newborn black lambs. “At first I thought I had to find out which ewes the lambs belonged to, because there must be several sheep.”
That turned out not to be the case. All lambs come from the same ewe. A unique. “It says on the internet that the chance is one in a million, but I think that’s not too bad,” says Cor. “In any case, we have not experienced this in 40 years. Sometimes four lambs and often three, but five is unique.”
The lambs and mother sheep are doing well. “Most of them drink with the mother, with the others we feed them with the bottle. But it is indeed going very well. They are very lively. And we did not have to help the mother during the delivery. So it apparently went very well. “
The birth of the quintuplets marked the start of the lambing season for the Timmerman brothers. “There are still about 18 ewes to lamb, so I expect about 35 more to come.”
Together with his brother Henk, Cor is a sheep farmer ‘for the hobby’. “But during this period it takes a lot of time,” he says. “Then you’re working on it for a few hours a day.”
Some of the lambs are sold when they are big enough. “We look at which ewes we can keep. We let them graze here. Behind and in front of our house, the meadows are full of solar panels, some of our sheep graze under them to maintain things.”
According to Cor, the fact that the quintuplets have a dark color but their mother wears a white woolen sweater can easily be explained. “The father is a variegated ram. That gene predominates.”