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PIERCETON - Brent and Renea Messmore maintain a small flock of Suffolk black-faced cross sheep. Their children, Amanda, Steve, Shana and Valarie, show the animals in 4-H classes and at open shows.
Four weeks ago one of the ewes, 3-year-old Dandelion, gave birth to a little male lamb.
Tuesday, she gave birth to even smaller twins.
Brent did some research only to discover two other reported cases of separate births where all the lambs lived.
"Usually the second lamb or lambs are born dead," Messmore said yesterday. "I've never heard of it before."
Wayne Singleton of Purdue University called the event "very, very unusual.
"Things happen on farms that aren't reported, so we don't have any records."
Singleton said the gestation period for a sheep is 144 to 152 days. A ewe's uterus is divided into two cavities, called "horns."
What he suspects is the ewe was bred and became pregnant with the single lamb but continued to be in estrus. When she bred again, she became pregnant with the twins.
"Lambs from the second pregnancy usually don't survive," Singleton said.
The phenomenon is called "superfetation," according to the Purdue expert.
According to Messmore, the productive ewe is Amanda's to show. The other children get to select from the new lambs and Steve, 13, and Shana, 11, have chosen the latest additions, a male and a female.
Valerie, 2, also participates in open shows and she'll be seen with the older wether.
Messmore said the twins were born underweight but are doing fine now.
