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Mary had a little lamb, but Teemu the sheep had 6 36%
By Richard Raycraft0%
4/30/2026, 2:52:21 PM
Topics: Agriculture, Veterinary Science
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Appeal to Authority, and Optimism Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 20.8% saturation with 183 hits. Analysis detected 1,252 faulty-reasoning hits from 880 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 42.7% and a BS Rank of 36% (10,862 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 64.60% of the article peer group.
LISTEN | Vermont farmer shocked at sheep sextuplets:
Teemu the sheep is named after Hockey Hall of Famer Teemu Selänne — and just like her Finnish superstar namesake, she delivered.
Teemu, a finnsheep who lives at Clover and Bee Farm in Underhill, Vt., gave birth to sextuplets earlier this month.
The sheer number of offspring was a shock to owner Anne O’Connor, who was expecting Teemu would have twins.
Teemu has previously delivered quadruplets.
Sextuplets are considered very rare, with some agricultural websites placing it at one in a million or higher.
“We were not expecting things to go as they went,” O’Connor told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
“First of all, we were not expecting her to deliver quite as early as she did.”
But the when turned out to be less surprising than the how — or, rather, the how many.
Farmer offers encouragement
It all started when O’Connor, who runs the farm with her husband, Gunnar, heard some commotion in the field.
“There’s this really special little nicker that sheep make when they are talking to their babies,” O’Connor said.
“So I heard that little kind of low-pitched, very gentle bleat, and I knew that she was lambing.”
One lamb was already on the ground, and number two was on the way as O’Connor walked towards Teemu.
By the time she got there, a third was coming into the world.
The number of lambs meant O’Connor had to help out with motherly duties, including cleaning the mucous away from the lambs’ muzzles so they could draw their first breaths.
“Partly because of the fact that Teemu was busy having what was ultimately six lambs, she didn’t get to that,” she said.
Lamb two was having a particularly difficult first few minutes of life.
O’Connor, who’s also an ER and pediatric physician, provided some compassion and encouragement.
“I always chat to the sheep, so I was telling Teemu that she was doing a great job, and I was talking to the babies, especially that little one who was struggling,” she said.
“Just like, ‘Come on, buddy, let’s do it!
You can breathe.’”
Teemu and her lambs graze at Clover and Bee Farm, Thursday, April 23, 2026, in Underhill, Vt.
(Amanda Swinhart/The Associated Press)
Lambs three and four came out in one push, with lamb five coming about ten minutes later.
At that point, thinking it was over, O’Connor gathered Teemu and her flock into the barn.
But it wasn’t over.
About 20 minutes later, the sixth and final lamb came out.
“It’s so funny, because that lamb … is the most mellow — definitely of the six, and potentially the most mellow sheep that we’ve ever had born on the farm,” she said.
“And I just imagine that everyone else was excited about being born, and she was just like, ‘Well, I’ll just take it easy — no rush.’”
True to their mother’s namesake, the six lambs are named after the Finnish numbers one through six — Yksi (1), Kaksi (2), Kolme (3), Neljä (4), Viisi (5) and Kuusi (6).
In this photo provided by the Clover and Bee Farm, a ewe and her sextuplet lambs rest at the farm in Underhill, Vt., on Thursday, April 9, 2026.
(Anne O'Connor/Clover and Bee Farm/The Associated Press)
Birth could be result of mutation: professor
Sheep sextuplets may be rare, but Dinesh Dadarwal also has some experience with unexpectedly prolific sheep births.
The associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s Veterinary Medical Centre and Western College of Veterinary Medicine vividly remembers when his students called and told him one of the ewes in his care gave birth to six lambs.
“I was thinking they must be mistaken,” he said.
“This was a very one-off case, and we have been doing this for about seven years now.”
He estimates the chances of sextuplets at somewhere between 1 in 600 to almost 1 in a million.
In Dadarwal’s case, he and his team were using a protocol that increased ovulation.
The fact that Teemu had so many lambs without that stimulation caught his attention.
“I’m thinking maybe it’s a mutation of one of the genes, or a couple of genes, that can lead to multiple ovulations,” he said.
“That can lead to, actually, multiple lambs from a ewe.”
He adds that more lambs mean the ewe will need more support.
“Now you have to help out those lambs to grow,” he said.
Lambs give hope in trying time
O’Connor says she kept an extra close eye on Teemu and her offspring for the first week.
“I slept in the barn the first few nights, just to make sure we’re doing bottle feedings with little Kaksi for every two to three hours for the first week or so,” she said.
The births came at a difficult moment for O’Connor, who was diagnosed with breast cancer a few weeks prior.
But she says the lambs are a timely sign of hope.
“Having these six lambs born has just been such a vibrant show of life here on the farm,” she said.
“It really has been a lovely reminder that life goes on, and it was a really, really hopeful thing to have happen.”
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