FARMING AFFAIRS

Lake County Mail, Issue 28, 3 December 1947, Page 8

FARMING AFFAIRS

prolific black ewe

19 Lambs in Seven Years Prom East Taieri comes a story of a Border Leicester ewe which may cause some eyebrow raising among sheep farmers, but the facts have been thoroughly checked. This ewe had the misfortune to be born black and would have been sold but for getting in lamb. She duly had her first lamb as a hogget. As a twotooth she went one better and produced twins. During the next five years she had four sets of triplets and one set of quadruplets, making a grand total of 19 lambs in seven years. Her last lambing was triplets—three ewe lambs —and a week later she died. The three ewe lambs were brought up as pets and early drew attention to themselves by winning first prize at the Otago show in the long wool hogget class. They are now members of their owner’s ewe flock and are folloAving mother’s example. Each had one lamb at first lambing and twins at second lambing. This year each of them has had triplets. Another rather strange coincidence in this ewe’s history is that, although the mother was black, none of her progeny ever shared any signs of dark colour, but this year one of each of her triplet daughters’ triplets has had one black lamb. This same sheep farmer had a few words to say on the subject of footrot. Taieri is usually considered to be unsuitable for any sheep other than Eoxnney, owing to its wet nature causing footrot among other breeds. This farmer has Border Leicesters and has never had footrot trouble. The remedy j is plenty of road work for his sheep and at least once each week he moves his flock along the road when changing paddocks. He has a very good footrot bath but has had no occasion to use it for several years.