Donegal sheep farmer Trevor Curran and his wife Kelley had an unexpected delivery this week, when a ewe delivered six lambs two days apart.

The Curran family farm consists of 150 lowland Suffolk- and Texel-cross ewes in Rathmullan, Co Donegal.

Triplets are a regular occurrence on the farm. However, this year's lambing was far from ordinary.

Texel and Charolais-cross rams were placed with the ewes for the breeding season. One Suffolk ewe was scanned with three, but to a great surprise delivered six lambs two days apart.

First batch

On Sunday 12 March, the Suffolk ewe went into labour and lambed three Suffolk lambs.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal, Trevor Curran said: “I thought she was very slow coming to milk after having the lambs and was still a huge size.

"She ended up not coming to milk and for the lambs welfare I took two lambs off the ewe and adopted them onto another lowland sheep."

Trevor Curran with his wife Kelley and son Dylan pictured with their Suffolk ewe and six lambs.

"Fast forward to Tuesday morning and the ewe still wasn’t looking great and I kept a close eye on her," Curran continued.

Second batch

"My father and I were in the yard and I started to notice the ewe was pressing again.

"When I went to assist her, I was shocked to see she had a lamb beside her and ended up having two more lambs later.

"I think the strangest thing of all is that she had three lambs that were black Suffolk on Sunday and three white Texel lambs on Tuesday.”

The Curran family are now delighted with their six healthy lambs. The Suffolk ewe has two of her own lambs, with the remaining lambs fostered on to other ewes.

"Farming certainly has no two days the same," Curran said.