![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/the-ewe-and-her-five-lambs-NOEZSJXPEBENDLMXJIS73HO6AQ.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA Tasman farmer got the shock of her life when a labouring ewe surprised her with a fifth lamb on a freezing night last week.<\/p>\n
Alison White, a lifelong farmer now running a hobby farm in Pigeon Valley southwest of Nelson, delivered an extraordinarily rare set of quintuplet lambs last Thursday entirely on her own, in the dark, during a snow flurry.<\/p>\n
She told 1News she had only ever had one set of quadruplets before and got a “real surprise” when the ewe got into trouble.<\/p>\n
“She’d had one and obviously needed help with the next ones. They weren’t coming out properly.”<\/p>\n
As she pulled the lambs free, White counted four but something told her to check again.<\/p>\n
“I just could not believe it when I reached in – I didn’t know if it was a lamb to start with, it was so far back. Pulled out a fifth one. I was absolutely stunned.”<\/p>\n
The whole delivery was done in minutes, though the second lamb took longer because it was poorly positioned. <\/p>\n
Once the five were out, White fetched a box, left one lamb with the ewe, which had no milk on one side at that stage, and carried the other four home and gave them colostrum.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The ewe and her five lambs. (Source: Alison White)<\/p>\n
One of the lambs had since died of a bacterial infection.<\/p>\n
The ewe, about five years old and predominantly Romney with possibly a bit of Poll Dorset, had triplets last year. White said carrying the weight of five lambs had taken its toll.<\/p>\n
“She’s recovered now and she’s feeding one lamb really well, but I haven’t put the others back on her.”<\/p>\n
Even seasoned locals were stunned. White said her cousin, who owns a Town and Country Vets, had never heard of five before – nor had other farmers she knew.<\/p>\n
“I Googled it and discovered that there had been some in recent years, just from memory I think it was 2018, 2022,” she said. <\/p>\n
“They didn’t all survive. One lot may have.”<\/p>\n
The survivors already have names. White’s two-year-old grandson will take the little ram lamb – possibly to be called Bob – while the ewe lambs are Holly, Polly and Dolly. <\/p>\n
Her grandchildren are set to be hands-on with the rearing, taking a separate set of quads born the night before, and one of them will raise the ram lamb from the quins.<\/p>\n
She said the sheep had been in prime condition heading into mating.<\/p>\n
“Before the rams were put out, there was a lot of feed around, so the sheep were in really good condition,” she said.<\/p>\n
White, who has farmed all her life, said she once ran about 600 sheep and milking cows alongside her father, but now keeps just a small flock.<\/p>\n
“It’s just rare, and amazing,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tasman farmer got the shock of her life when a labouring ewe surprised her with a fifth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[50,156,14934,111,139,69,2224],"class_list":["post-575520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-animals","tag-entertainment","tag-farming","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tasman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}