11 lambs born on Sask. farm during blizzard, 11 more born since then

Eleven lambs were born at Fenek Farms during last weekend's blizzard. (Photo submitted by Josef Buttigieg)

While a blizzard moved through parts of the province last weekend, one Saskatchewan farmer was busy helping his sheep give birth to 11 lambs.

Josef Buttigieg of Fenek Farms said between Friday evening and Saturday, two sets of triplets, two sets of twins, and a solo sheep were all born within hours.

“It was a bit of an error on my side, we were planning that lambing should have started this week at some point, but apparently my calculations didn’t work out so well,” he said.

Buttigieg recalled the night, saying the experience was interesting because of the blizzard.

“Visibility that night was nonexistent, at least where we’re at. The barn’s only about 100 yards, 150 yards from the house, but you can maybe only see maybe 20, so you couldn’t see the barn,” he said.

“So the concern I guess, at the end of the day, becomes if there’s any complications, if I need a vet, how’s the vet going to come to you? So you know that you’re pretty much stuck by yourself that whole time,” he said.

He said since visibility was so bad and since he was tired, he found a spot to sleep inside the barn.

“Just set up a nice corner, a nice comfy corner in one of the stalls and just took a quick power nap there. Now, I was rudely interrupted with that power nap in the sense that one of the ewes that was sitting in the pen decided to start licking me, figures because I smell like her baby,” he said.

“Nice good morning wake-up kiss from a sheep apparently.”

Buttigieg said there did end up being one complication that night with one of the sets of triplets.

“We had a set of triplets and one of them was backwards, so it was a matter of trying to reposition them at the same time and then start helping mom to pull it out,” he said. “It becomes that you’re a little bit on the edge so to speak, trying to make sure that mom is happy and the babies are happy at the end.”

Since the 11 lambs were born last weekend, 11 more were born on Wednesday.

“Either it happens all at once or you’ll have periods or days where nothing happens and it’ll drop a whole bunch more again,” he said.

Buttigieg said not including the babies, they have a flock of 140 sheep. Of those, there are about 110 that are currently pregnant.

Fenek Farms is located about 10 minutes north of Regina.