This newly born lamb in East Huntspill has been in the national media spotlight this week after being named the world’s largest after weighing in at a massive 23lb.
The stocky-legged animal, called Sally, is three times the size of a normal lamb and left farmer Ken Jones a little puzzled when his ewe, Daisy, kept on getting bigger, and bigger, but didn’t give birth.
He soon found out why when he spotted the sheep struggling to give birth on Sunday (March 14th).
“I always keep an eye on them,’ Mr Jones, who is a part-time sheep farmer with his wife Susan, told Burnham-On-Sea.com.
“She was lying down and pushing for quite some time and obviously having some difficulties so I went to help.”
“I thought she was having triplets she was so big. As I pulled the front legs I thought ‘this is a big one’. It only came out about halfway when normally that would have been the whole lamb – it just kept coming and coming.”
“It was incredible. We’ve had quite a few big lambs, but she was nearly twice the size of anything we have had before.”
The whole delivery took about 15 minutes, compared to the usual two or three minutes for a normal sized lamb.
“They are usually a bit lazy when they are big, but she was surprisingly quick to get up,” said Mr Jones.
Realising he had a much larger-than-average lamb on his hands, the farmer, who also runs a marquee hire company, found a pair of fishing scales on which to weigh the new member of the flock.
The lamb will be full size in about four months and the Jones family are keen to see just how big Sally will be.
Typically a lamb grows to 40lb, which means based on the current ratio Sally could be more than 120lb. Mr Jones, however, predicts she could reach 60lb.
