Lambing season is a busy time on sheep farms and can often be filled with both joy and despair, but one Donegal farmer is in awe as two of his ewes have both delivered sextuplets alive and healthy.

Agriland caught up with the owner of these two prolific ewes - Peter McGee from Ballybulgan in Laghey, Co. Donegal.

Peter explained that he was first alerted to the litters of lambs when sheep scanner Kieran McGee was assessing his flock.

He said: "Kieran scanned them and he was taking a while at this one and I asked him what was wrong. He said: 'I'm trying to count them' and the next thing was he sprayed six dots on her.

"'Aye,' he says, 'there's six in her', and he scanned the next one and she ended up having six as well."

The farmer said that the scanning was beneficial because he knew in advance that these ewes would need extra care and attention in the lead up to lambing.

The farmer said: "I had to keep on the prolapse harness and I was watching them night and day.

"I delivered every one of them - some of the feet and heads were down, it wasn't simple you know.

"Thank God I got them all out. I had beestings here in the fridge and as soon as they lambed, I gave them a bottle of beestings and went on to the next one - they all took to the bottle then."

The first of the two ewes lambed two weeks ago and the second sextuplet-bearing ewe lambed a few days after.

Unsurprisingly, the ewes need some assistance in feeding their large litters of lambs.

Peter said: "I'm feeding them the Shine ewe milk replacer - it's great stuff."

The ewes are Cheviot-cross and the lambs were sired by a Texel ram.

Remarkably, Peter also noted that one of the two ewes that delivered six lambs this year had five lambs last year, four the previous year, and three the year before, leaving a total of 18 live lambs born from the ewe in the past four years.

The flock owner believes it "has to be" some sort of a world record.

Peter has been busy tending to the ewes and the lambs since their delivery and said: "There's a lot of work all the same, it just doesn't happen - you know yourself.

"I was feeding them every two hours, I lived in the shed for a week - sure we had to."